Patricia LaRue

It’s a special kind of disdain for pregnancy and for women in general, I say, when you call pregnant women incubators for the fetus.

That’s what Patricia LaRue, of Canadians for Choice was cited as saying in a La Presse article on May 22, which I received translated into English.

Patricia LaRue, of Canadians for Choice, sounding an alarm that brings to mind the old slogans, says that pregnant women must not become incubators for fetuses once again

The whole article is a piece of work. It begins with a pregnant woman who passes the date for a legal abortion and subsequently shoots herself in the abdomen. She is charged under a law that we are led to believe is something like Bill C-484 would be. It turns out to be a case where “ultimately the charge was amended” ie. she didn’t suffer any consequences. It also turns out to be California, over three decades ago.

Any editor with an ounce of journalistic integrity would ask their reporter to FIND A NEW LEDE. Is this the best kind of fear mongering those who are against Bill C-484 can do?

In short, we are supposed to oppose Bill C-484 because one crazy lady shot herself in the abdomen in California thirty years ago.

Now that, that is high quality reasoning. Excuse me while I go shoot myself in the abdomen for the sheer frustration of it all.

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.”

“Fetus incubators”

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