Not often you pick up a paper and flip casually through to read something like this:
Like Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, one act of killing requires more acts of killing to legitimize itself. This has been the real agenda behind the enigmatic enthusiasm for stem-cell research and the furious criticism of bans on late-term, or “partial-birth,” abortion.
One act of abortion is killing, but two or more–now that’s “choice.” (From the Saturday National Post.)
Abortion is legal in Canada right up until the mother goes into labour. No one can argue that point. What is often disputed back and forth is whether late-term abortions actually occur for non-medical reasons. Here (thanks to Big Blue Wave) is an example of such a debate.
Says the pro-abortion side:
Although there’s no abortion law in Canada, doctors do adhere to the CMA recommendation of no abortions on request after 20 weeks. Even then, so-called “elective” abortions after 16 weeks are rare…
Though Joyce Arthur is quoted above, I’ve heard many an abortion rights activist cite similar information. Patricia LaRue, Executive Director for Canadians for Choice, claimed late-term abortions “don’t happen… No Canadian doctor agrees to do an abortion past 23.6 weeks for social reasons.”
But fact responds in the form of Margaret Somerville’s personal experience. She enumerates such examples as a woman, 34 weeks pregnant, who did not want to have a baby with a cleft-palate. Or again, a 29 year old student who “was 32 weeks pregnant and wanted an abortion for social reasons.”
There is an abortion clinic… in Montreal that… does all the very late term (over 22 weeks gestation) abortions… It’s been reported that the Quebec Government has sent at least one obstetrician to the US to be trained to do these abortions – if they were not happening, why have a clinic and why train someone to do them?
Denying that these late-term abortions occur would, I suppose, make the idea of them less haunting. How is it, then, that we who oppose abortion are faced with their very reality, while those who support their existence get to shield their eyes? In the words of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, I say to those abortion supporters: “Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”
Statistics Canada says we do late term abortions. The women at the decidedly pro-abortion conference at UofT law school in January said in 2003 there were 320 abortions done at over 20 weeks gestation, 401 in 2004. (If that’s not late term enough for you, I suggest taking a look at some fetal development photos.)
This comes up again–and will clearly come up again and again–this time because Carolyn McLeod, professor of women’s studies and philosophy at Western says the Life Canada billboards are false. She’s not telling the truth, and she must know it. So the question is why?
Perhaps she has seen the photos of what a 20 week old baby looks like and has problems justifying our collective, cultural decision that these babies are disposable. Easier to say it just doesn’t happen.
So in the end, I take heart from her denial. Because it means she can’t stomach the reality. And no one should be able to do that.
Any time you mention late-term abortion pro-choicers tell you a) it doesn’t happen and b) even if it did it would be in extreme cases to save the life of the mother, or something similarly reasonable. I, for one, am not so anti-abortion as to sacrifice a mother for a fetus, especially not if she already has other young children to look after.
But that’s not what we’re talking about, is it:
The number of late abortions in Britain has reached a record level, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
Almost 3,000 were carried out on women who were at least 20 weeks pregnant, according to the latest annual figures in England and Wales, representing a 44 per cent increase in less than a decade.
The vast majority were for “lifestyle” reasons; less than a quarter were because of a risk that the child would be born handicapped.
I wish we’d stop lying to ourselves. Late-term abortions do happen, and they shouldn’t. At least, not for “lifestyle” reasons.
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Rebecca adds: I’d love to see the numbers on how many third trimester abortions are done to save the life, or health, of the mother. While it’s always better to go full term, in this day and age almost all babies born early, but in the third trimester, do alright – better than they’d fare if aborted, certainly. And any medical condition caused by the pregnancy that would threaten the mother’s life, that would be resolved by ending the pregnancy, would respond to delivery as well as to termination.