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Changed

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There’s a new book out, Changed, authored by the same woman who put together the web site Abortion changes you. I’ve heard great things about her.

Now I decided recently I don’t buy the statistic, widely cited, that one in three women in the United States will have an abortion by the age 45 (Why? That’s the subject of another post, and also, to be fair, some substantive research. I stand to be corrected but I have good reason to believe that number is inflated).

But no matter, whether one in three, or one in X, we still ought to understand that we are indeed living, walking and working with women who have had abortions and that an abortion will fundamentally change you: The woman who has one, the boyfriend, the husband, the children. All of us.

Abortion is never a private matter.   

Health care workers and the right to choose

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Sakatchewan-Wanuskewin MP Maurice Vellacott has reintroduced a bill that would protect the conscience rights of healthcare workers. Read about it here.

I like the fact that he framed his bill in freedom of choice although I strongly feel that the irony will be lost on self-proclaimed “choice” advocates – as the weeping and gnashing of teeth over bill C-484 reminds us daily. If choice is, as we are told by Ujjal Dosanjh, “paramount,” it depends for whom and in what circumstances. As with everything abortion, the supremacy of choice is so relative it becomes absolute.

Re-introducing his bill in the Commons, Vellacott declared:

Mr. Speaker, the bill would prohibit coercion in medical procedures that offend a person’s religion or belief that human life is inviolable. The bill seeks to ensure that health care providers will never be forced to participate against their will in procedures such as abortions or acts of euthanasia.

This is a good thing. I have argued before that the right to have a conscience was but an empty shell without the right to act on it. And unlike what abortion advocates would have you believe, the abortion debate is everything but settled. In the absence of consensus on the morality and health benefits of abortion, it stands to reason that individual health care professionals should be the arbitrators of what they are about to perform.

I have not yet read Vellacott’s proposed bill but here are some hurdles I expect it to face. To begin, Vellacott’s bill will face the same accusations of back-doorism as bill C-484. But where Vellacott’s proposed bill notoriously parts from C-484 is that it might de facto prevent some women from getting abortions. Maybe not in large urban centers; but faced with a conscientious objector in a rural area, women might not have another choice but to pursue the pregnancy. Don’t shoot me for pointing The Other Side to their choice argument; they are well aware of it already.

So what does it all mean for any law that would protect conscience rights at the risk of limiting access? It will be the object of a Charter challenge pitting women’s rights and freedoms against those of health care practitioners. “But”, you tell me, “abortion is not a right in Canada.” Nope, but you can bet the farm that a bill such as Vellacott’s will push abortion advocates into the debate they don’t want to have. The only way to tear down Vellacott’s kind of bill will be to argue that it limits women’s rights and freedoms in a way that is neither reasonable nor justifiable in a free and democratic society.

Hopefully, we will be ready for that challenge when it knocks at our door. Because if abortion is enshrined as a constitutional right, there is no telling where that train will take us.

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Rebecca asks: Maybe someone can clear this up for me. It should be pretty straightforward for most doctors to avoid ever performing an abortion once they’re finished their schooling. I’ve heard that it can be a lot harder to get through medical school without carrying one out, and some people have argued to me that since a D&C (the procedure by which most abortions in Canada are carried out) is often necessary for things other than aborting a pregnancy (primarily removing tissue after a miscarriage) it’s legitimate for medical schools to require that graduates know how to do a D&C.

I’ve always wondered, though – precisely since many D&Cs are done for reasons other than abortion, why couldn’t pro-life medical students train by doing those (non-elective, non-aborting) procedures? There is a big difference between the ability to perform a procedure (which is identical whether it’s removing a viable living fetus from the uterus or removing dead tissue) and the circumstances under which it’s done. In practice, how hard is it to be pro-life in medical schools these days?

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Véronique says: Your reasoning is right in theory. My experience talking with pro-life med students is that this is more about power than about D&Cs.

I should maybe share the experience of a brilliant young man I met some years ago. He was invited for a med school interview following the selection of a written essay. The essay topic was “An Event that Changed Your Life.” Innocent, he wrote about attending World Youth Day in Toronto. During his interview he was grilled on his position on abortion. The interviewers asked about nothing else. When he was turned down for med school, his interview report said that the committee believed that his religious convictions would prevent him from offering optimal medical care to women. He appealed this decision to the University’s human rights board for religious discrimination and the University upheld the committee’s decision. He applied to another University, kept quiet about his religion and was admitted.

But I think you ask a great question: how hard is it to be pro-life in medical schools these days? I would love to hear our readers’ input.

Librarian overreacts, blames Bush

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When I saw this in The Toronto Star today, I knew I needed to do some additional reading. Could it really be that the Bush administration has time to clamp down on librarians, of all people? That he was up late the last couple of nights, wondering how to make it more difficult for medical researchers? 

A casual perusal of alternate news sources reveals that my headline for this post is likely more accurate than the Zerbisias column. Read the real news, here and here. Sounds like one overzealous librarian made a mistake and decided to blame–who else–George W. Bush.

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Tanya says: Agreed. After all, if Bush is opposed to abortion, why would he want to hide numerous findings from from POPLINE about the correlation between abortion and depression.

Autism linked to premature birth

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Read the news release here. Then revisit our post on previous abortions and the risk of preterm birth.

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Rebecca adds: Tsk tsk, Véronique. Don’t you know that sharing scientifically established facts is just another way of imposing patriarchal values on women, to scare them out of exercising their right to choose?

Seriously – it bears repeating that if any other necessary surgery, let alone an elective procedure like an abortion, were done exclusively on women, and more often on minority women, without studying its long term consequences, or without sharing the facts about those consequences that are known, feminists and all sane people would be up in arms. Consider the work that’s been done on unnecessary hysterectomies, for instance, or on the virtues of radical mastectomy compared to lumpectomy for cancer. A great deal of thought has gone into considering these procedures not only in terms of their short term medical consequences but also their longer term effect on women’s physical and mental health, and sexual health. None of this discussion has yet taken place about abortion.

 

Obama’s extremism

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The “consensus-building” candidate Barack Obama on abortion:

Obama’s record on abortion is extreme. He opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion — a practice a fellow Democrat, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once called “too close to infanticide.” Obama strongly criticized the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban. In the Illinois state Senate, he opposed a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of infants mistakenly left alive by abortion. And now Obama has oddly claimed that he would not want his daughters to be “punished with a baby” because of a crisis pregnancy — hardly a welcoming attitude toward new life…

I’m reminded of Trish’s post from what seems like a long time ago now. “Yes we can” be virulently pro-abortion, “yes we can” oppose measures to save babies who are born alive after an abortion… But “can we” be president too? And that remains to be seen.   

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Brigitte wonders: What would Mr. Obama say to one of his daughters asking: “Dad, are you saying you were punished with us?”

Women as guinea pigs

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I’ve talked to countless women who believe abortion has no risks whatsoever. And yes, the charge is very real that somehow when I come up with valid, peer-reviewed studies showing otherwise it’s a pro-life conspiracy. Preterm birth the result of a prior abortion is very real. Read about it here.

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Andrea adds: I addressed this issue before here. And I will repeat: Information is not a scare tactic. It is information, pure and simple, that women are not getting. I wonder if those working in clinics even know. They should of course, and I hold them fully and completely accountable for lying to women through their silence. Save for really seeking this information out, it is almost impossible to get. And once one finds it, the accusations of it being false or used to “trick” women into not getting an abortion begin.  

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Tanya adds emphasis: The above article states:

The Nuremberg Code was adopted in 1964. The code insists on animal studies before exposing human beings to any procedure. All surgical procedures in Canada have been tested on animals. Except one. There are no published animal studies on vacuum aspiration abortion.

I feel like this is something we should be yelling from rooftops. How can the issue of informed consent even be addressed when all the information has yet to be collected? Vacuum aspiration abortion is literally and indisputably inhumane according to Canadian standards of medicine. It’s anti-woman!

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Patricia says: It’s interesting to note which community provides a disproportionately high number of these “guinea pigs”, at least in the US. Kay writes: “Black American women, although only 12% of the American population, undergo 35.2% of all abortions.” Again, shouldn’t feminists be screaming from the rooftops (to quote Tanya) about this misuse (abuse) of a vulnerable population?

Lowering the bar

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Brigitte posted recently on U.K.’s bid to lower the gestational age limit on abortion from 24 to 20 weeks in light of improved outcomes for extremely premature infants. An accompanying piece to the Telegraph’s article featured a toddler born at 23 weeks gestation and his mother commenting on the proposed revised guidelines.

Now, I want to be very careful in critiquing an effort that would no doubt reduce the number of abortions performed. That being said, my area of specialty in bioethics is neonatal ethics. I’ve seen enough infants born at 23 weeks gestation to last me a lifetime and while I support making every reasonable effort to support them medically while they grow enough lung and brain tissue to make it in the big wide world, I’m not sure I understand why abortion should be prevented with more gusto when it targets a viable fetus. My objection is philosophical: abortion cannot be half-right or half-wrong. Either the fetus is human or it’s not. You have to take the life of a viable fetus just as much as a non-viable one. That being said, I can grasp – if I don’t completely buy it – the moral basis of this partial ban on abortion. Infants who are completely dependant on their mothers for survival can be dispatched by the mother. When they become independently viable they should no longer be considered the property of their mother.

But let’s not fool ourselves here, “viability” when applied to a 23-weeker is a loaded term. Infants that young are not viable without the help of a truck-load of expensive equipment, 1-on-1 nursing care and a team of highly trained pediatricians. In many cases, this is not enough to save very premature infants and in another many cases, life-saving treatments can themselves cause severe impairments.

I think that what makes me so uneasy with this initiative, despite its positive aspects, is its potential to “de-dramatize” the abortion of non-viable fetuses, particularly in the eyes of the silent majority who oppose abortion but abhor judging those who get one even more. It seems that by lowering the gestational limit on abortion, we have found a way to make abortion both right and wrong. By making the buck stop at an arbitrarily set date, we numb ourselves to the reality of abortion with the balm of feeling like we actually did something about it.

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Brigitte feels like quibbling: Point nicely made and taken about the danger of de-dramatizing early abortion. Though in this country it could hardly be less dramatized… The thing about arbitrary limits is that there is a point after which the state will not tolerate so-called lifestyle abortions because these are considered worse by public opinion than those performed at, say, 8 weeks, when the embryo looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. Likewise, why is it that sentences are more severe for someone convicted of first-degree murder than they are for any other form of homicide? Because the law, reflecting public opinion, considers first-degree murder worse. It’s far from perfect, as a system. But it has the virtue of being legitimate.

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Andrea adds: I started this group because public opinion must and indeed can change. There is nothing better or worse about an abortion at 23 weeks than at eight weeks–that small person only now looks more like he or she will when born. The law is not effective here and surely the law in the UK is worse than no law at all. Sure, it reflects public opinion and therefore the gruesome dismembering limb from limb of babies at 23 weeks is more repugnant to many than an early term abortion. But not to me, it isn’t.

When I was little, I loved going on frog and toad hunts. There was something amazing to me about these tiny creatures in the woods. There still is. I would (most unfortunately) go to any length to catch one, so I could look at it in my hand. (This changed at least a little when I fell into a stinky swamp.)

If we cared about people in the same manner as we do about small toads in the environment… if we held the developing embryo in awe, as I do these tiny toads–we would all oppose abortion fully at any time after those cells began rapidly multiplying, knowing that all genetic material is in place from conception onwards for a whole new person to live and thrive.

I believe we can make people care about embryos and should strive for nothing less.

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Rebecca adds: I’m not sure I agree that the law in the UK is worse than no law at all. While I don’t see the law as the best way to stop abortion, laws (especially those with popular support) express the collective opinion of the people. I would rather Canadians express the opinion that abortions after 24 weeks, or 20 weeks, are unacceptable, than our current iteration, which is that anything goes if you can find a doctor willing to do it.

I also find it surprising how few Canadians are aware of how extreme our legal position on abortion is – the thoroughly secularized western European states are all much less permissive than we are. Then again, given that there are literally no restrictions on abortion in Canada, that’s not saying much.

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Andrea clarifies: I worry about that portion of the population that looks to the law as a teacher. And then says: If abortion is legal before XX weeks, it is right. But agreed on your point: I too would rather live in a world where we can all agree that late term abortion is wrong. That sentiment already exists in Canada; we see it expressed in polls. I want to cause people to reconsider their views on how/when life begins: A little respect and sympathy for the poor embattled embryo. 

Kids these days

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My children Liesl and Kurt are in the same split 5/6 class in school. Liesl and Kurt are pseudonyms: since they sing a mean Sound of Music, I decided to dub my children with their singing part which is more or less age-appropriate and also reflects their birth order and personalities. Because they are my oldest children, Liesl and Kurt are the family’s guinea pigs. Age-appropriate parenting is not the only thing my husband and I experiment on Liesl and Kurt, we also discover new realms of peer interactions at every turn. Enter dating, crushes, flirtation and match-making… Did I mention this was a grade 5/6 class?

Since we shamelessly monitor our family email account, we already had an inkling of the underage equivalent of “Merlot and email don’t mix.” But I have to ask you what I asked Kurt and Liesl – who, I should mention, don’t have mates but associate with people who do – “What on earth are grade 5 kids doing with a boyfriend/girlfriend?” And this I mean both conceptually and practically.

What troubles me, above and beyond wondering how kids get such ideas, is the effect of these pint-sized soap operas on class dynamic. Liesl was up late yesterday evening worrying about recess. She told me: “Nobody plays anymore. Instead, they huddle in their little corners commiserating about their broken hearts and bad-mouthing whoever dumped them.” She concluded: “Playing tag is no fun with 2 players.” So there you have it: little cliques of broken-hearted 10-year-olds who can’t play tag if that other clique is also playing ‘cuz that would be disloyal. The drama has somehow percolated to the younger grades, meaning that Martha and Brigetta are also acquainted with such delicious morsels as whether or not Nick kissed Jen on the bus ride back from ski club. Supper time conversations at my place sound increasingly like a clip from Entertainment Tonight and I don’t mean this as a compliment.

With apologies to Brigitte for yanking the Crusty-Ol’Goat crown so abruptly, I am wondering if I am the only one who sees a problem? Let me be quite blunt here: physical and emotional attraction between these kids is not likely to decrease as they reach adolescence. And by adolescence, I mean the real, medical, adolescence, not the silly state of mind these kids think themselves in. When you start dating and hugging at 10, what do you do at 12 when you meet that “really-really-nice-guy-you-totally-crush-on”? And when you start kissing and fondling at 12, what do you do at 14 when you meet “the-real-love-of-your-life”? And when you start kissing and fondling at 14, what do you do at 16 when your hormones are raging for real and “the-most-adorable-guy” asks you on a date? You become a statistic. A teen sex, teen pregnancy, teen STD, teen abortion statistic. Parents, wake-up! This is not cute!

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Brigitte is: Quite horrified by these stories and does not mind sharing the goat crown.

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Rebecca goes off to reread Wendy Shalit, but first adds: I’m going to enter the bidding for the Crusty Old Goat crown this week, too! Seriously, I’ve seen all too many examples of this, and it makes me contemplate homeschooling and/or single sex schools.

But really, what do we expect when we wallow in today’s popular culture? When 5-year-olds watch prime time television (which they don’t in my house) and see the sexual behaviour that is now considered unworthy of comment, it’s so common, why is it surprising that they think that normal behaviour includes sexual innuendo, kissing, hand holding, and, especially for little girls, the kind of hip-wiggling walk and coquettish behaviour that was in the 19th century literally the province of prostitutes?

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Tanya wonders: Can I send my daughter to school in the 19th century? Do they do that?

Upside down justice

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Abortion is unjust from just about every angle. So why do we keep it around? I’m giving a talk for the Halton ProLife group this evening on the injustice of abortion and arguing that the reason why abortion is offered in this society is because too many people, even those who might be personally against abortion, actually think it is compassionate in some way; that it serves justice.

I think offering abortion serves justice as effectively as riding a horse upside down.

(Photo from Wenceslas Square, Prague)

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