The Toronto Star has three hilarious stories about abortion today. Story one, story two, and story three. Methinks some folks are in danger of getting a touch hysterical. But hey, great! The more panicky they sound, the better. Like, say, this, from the first story:
Pro-lifers want to revert to the status quo ante, a time when police arrested doctors who carried out safe, therapeutic abortions and put them on trial — until they found that juries would not convict them. Then the Supreme Court struck down those anti-abortion laws.
To be honest, I don’t know what other pro-lifers want (other than the obvious). I’m sure you can find some who are in favour of prosecuting abortion doctors. But I’d be surprised if you found many. Certainly over here we’re not keen on stuff like that. And speaking just for myself, here is what I want: I want women to think of abortion as an unthinkable option – all by themselves. If more of them did, there would be fewer abortions, and that would make me very happy indeed. Other than that, I would like various levels of government to stop funding abortion (except in the very rare cases where the mother’s life truly is at risk).
I’m going to try to accomplish these things without getting too hysterical. Panicking is rarely a good strategy.
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Andrea adds: Hysterical, yes. This sentence wins the “I work in downtown Toronto and have never set foot outside the shadow of the CN Tower” award:
In Canada, medicare covers legal abortions; yet we refuse the pleas of maternal health advocates [Andrea notes women overseas aren’t pleading for this, but “advocates” sure are] to continue funding safe abortions abroad — where the dangers of botched procedures are far higher. Now foreign aid groups say they have been unable to secure renewed funding from Ottawa for work that may include abortions.
This is very thinly veiled political advocacy that aims to legalize abortion, nothing to do with women’s health. If there is no access to any medical clinic of any kind, no access to electricity or to doctors, just how is it that even an abortion is going to be safe?
Incidentally, were doctors to be punished for providing abortions, I would see that as a reasonable action, rather like punishing johns for prostitution. That, alongside punishing Toronto Star editorialists for terribly inaccurate writing and severe naiveté.
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I’d love to stage a “die-in” at the offices of the Ontario Federation of Labour and the YWCA, among so many others, but use pictures and props of the corpses of aborted fetuses rather than coat hangers. Somehow, the prospect of prosecuting doctors who perform abortions pales in comparison to the facts of the deaths that are visited by them on these smallest and most vulnerable members of our society.
I have no desire to lock up doctors who are providing a desired “service” simply because that doesn’t solve the problem at hand. The problem is that the service is desired in the first place. I don’t want to take away a woman’s right to choose by jailing people, I want to make her see the horror of her choice, and I want her to have other desirable choices available.
On a lighter note, can you *imagine* what the headlines would be if prolifers actually did hold a “peaceful die-in” to bring awareness to the plight of those we seek to protect? No one found the prochoicers’ language to be inflammatory, even if they were “eluogizing” the estimated number of women who have died in back-alley abortions that somehow were reported in countries where abortion is often illegal, and even birth records are often extremely hard to come by….
I find it difficult to believe that we would be granted the same calm acceptance by the Star…
I couldn’t agree more. Whether abortion is legal or not, whether there are doctors preforming them or not, it’s ultimately up to women to change their way of thinking (and up to us to help them).
The idea of unsafe abortions is also horribly skewed. I’ve even read newspapers, The New York Times in particular, quoting Susan B. Anthony, then saying she opposed abortion as it was an ‘unsafe procedure’ at the time (which is completely false, she opposed them on moral and ethical grounds). The common practice of bloodletting was also ‘unsafe’, but these ‘unsafe’ claims are never made based upon the state of medicine in general in a time or place. It’s simply an attempt to convince us to hand funding over to the IPPF to open up clinics. I for one, am not comfortable with Planned Parenthood operating the only (or any) clinic in any given region. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America already claims to be “the nation’s [America’s] leading sexual and reproductive health care advocate and provider.” That doesn’t help me sleep at night.