Here’s a clip from CBC’s Power and Politics where Don Hutchinson of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (he’s a lawyer by training) and Joyce Arthur discuss the topic.
I wholeheartedly support MPs bringing up this issue. And MP Stephen Woodworth is not bringing up abortion, but rather, an examination of what is in the womb, and whether a child in the womb has any rights. You may think I’m splitting hairs here in identifying that there is a difference, but I’m not.
Abortion is one possible outcome of pregnancies, but in Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. DFG back in 1997, a mother, pregnant with her third child, could not be coerced into drug treatment of any kind in spite of the fact that her first two were born with problems because of her glue-sniffing addiction. Here, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the mother could not be put in treatment against her will because the unborn child had no legal status until he or she was born. In this case, the mother had no intention of aborting, but she also had no intention of halting her addiction. Had the child had any rights, perhaps this situation could have been changed.
In any event, while I support MPs bringing this up, I still don’t believe that political change is where the abortion debate is at. Ie. Even if we start to debate a law, it won’t truly protect unborn children, because the best we can hope for at this current time is the absolutely uncivilized situation of countries like the UK, where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks, and even after that in rare cases, if I’m not mistaken. 24 weeks. Here’s a picture of a non-human, non-child, non-entity at 24 weeks:
Or how about we work decades long, struggle really hard, and get that abortion limited pushed down to 22 weeks?
Right. Something’s gotta give and while political debate is a useful tool in igniting the conscience of our nation, I don’t think that’s where it’s at, in total.
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Would it not be better to have some protection – even if, at that 26 week limit, it is nowhere NEAR enough? (I’m a 26-week preemie, btw.) It’s better than our current state where there is none whatsoever, right? Perhaps the limits could be scaled back a bit at a time, instead of one massive ban which most people would surely object to.
Thoughts?
Hi Mouse:
I think the value in raising up the issue of limits after a certain number of weeks is largely rhetorical. That’s not me saying it isn’t useful, it is profoundly useful in changing the culture because discussing term limits should get our population thinking about when people matter. But before any law actually has an effect on our abortion rate and our mentality as regards “unwanted” or difficult pregnancies, the culture must change.
I’m not a politician, and not likely to ever be one. If I were, sure, I’d support an incremental law–to do otherwise would be to say I support abortions happening after 22, 24, 26 weeks or whatever term limit it is that is under discussion. But it’s not ideal to me. That’s why, I suppose, I doubt very much I’ll ever be a politician. (I’d say I’ll never be a politician, except that I lost a bet once, a steak dinner and wine at a fancy steakhouse, because I said “Stephen Harper will never be Prime Minister.”)
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Keep up the great work! If I wasn’t a starving student I would buy you some steak – you deserve it 🙂
A little late to the discussion but I find your points interesting and wondered if you hadn’t considered some of the numbers.
If abortions were limited to 20 weeks, according to the numbers from Canadian Institute of Health Information, there would be over 500 lives saved – and that is based on roughly 23,000 abortions for which the gestational limit was reported. We know there are far more abortions in Canada, say 4 times more, so then the number jumps to 2000, although this is all guess work because we don’t know the numbers and we don’t know the gestational ages of murdered unborn children.
A debate regarding gestational limit is important for a number of reasons. First of all it would save lives. And secondly, it would force hospitals and clinics to properly report the numbers and ages of unborn children who are aborted.
For these factors I think a law banning late-term abortions is necessary.
Good points, Mike, thanks. Certainly, as I said above, were I a politician, I would not oppose a late term ban. But there are shortcomings to the approach as well.