Abortion is in the news again – much to the chagrin of those who like to keep their baby-killing quiet, publicly-funded and beyond criticism. It is more than twenty years since the courts bowed to Henry Morgantaler and his followers and introduced the universal right to abortion in Canada, making this country unique in the democratic world in having no laws whatsoever to protect the life of an unborn child at any time during pregnancy.
The decision was based more on current legal opinion and political fashion than it was on moral law, Canadian precedent or a meaningful consideration of the arguments. Although the seven judges gave four different opinions, they agreed that any restriction of abortion was a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And as we know, there is no freedom business like Charter freedom business.
In those two decades almost 2 million babies have been killed in what is supposed to be humanity’s safest place, the womb. It has also cost more than one billion public dollars, in that the taxpayer is obliged to finance this elective surgery. In that same period numerous necessary medical procedures have been de-funded by governments that would not dream of removing a penny from state funded abortion, no matter how wealthy the woman who demanded the procedure.
The last twenty years have also seen a curious twisting of the debate around the issue and a monumentally successful campaign to marginalize pro-life opinion. Politicians are told that to even discuss the policy would lose them votes – though polls repeatedly show Canadians as being divided on the subject – and opponents of abortion, whatever their views on other issues, are portrayed as wide-eyed zealots.
Until recently the discussion itself was seldom heard. Pro-life clubs banned on campuses, pro-lifers silenced and attacked. It is the love that dare not speak its name. The genuine love that dare not speak its name. The love for children, from their earliest and most vulnerable.
The reasons for the pro-life position are many and obvious. The unborn child is unique from the point of conception, with its own DNA and a genomic character that is entirely separate from any other person. A woman has the choice to do whatever she wants with a tuft of hair or an appendix but not with a distinct person within her. The unborn child cannot survive outside of the womb but then a fully developed newborn child will similarly die if left without care.
The word “fetus” merely means “young child” and, anyway, after three months of growth nothing new develops. At nine months the unborn child is more mature, but then a five-year-old is more mature than a two-year-old. We know instinctively that this is a child, witnessed by how we would react if we saw an obviously pregnant woman smoking or drinking. We’ve been programmed to think differently if we see a pregnant women opting to end the life of her powerless child.
The reasons for abortion have been explained myriad times – particularly through television drama, where there is no journalistic obligation reason to even pretend balance. Most of these arguments are entirely spurious.
”Abortion in the case of rape and incest?” These tragedies provide less than a fraction of one percent of the reasons for abortion and they are mentioned by abortion advocates simply to make pro-lifers appear extreme. We should ask if those who support abortion is these rare cases would oppose it when rape and incest are not the causes of pregnancy. It would, of course, be a rhetorical question.
“Before the Morgentaler decision enormous numbers of women died in back street abortions.” This is mostly propaganda. Of course such horrors occurred but there are no reliable figures and informed sources dismiss most of these claims as nonsense. We do, however, know just how many babies now die in front street abortions.
“Only women have a right to comment on this issue.” Men are fathers, men are taxpayers, men are citizens. Men are also abortionists. But surely it is the nature and quality of the argument rather than the gender of the individual that should inform our position. Gender bias does, however, lead to far more baby girls being aborted than baby boys. Rather a bitter paradox for feminist ideology.
At the very least we should agree that the new discussion is healthy for democracy and intelligent debate. Unless, that is, people are frightened of being confronted with a truth that might frighten them.
