Abortion: Life Or Death – Who Chooses Essay, Research Paper
In Roman times, abortion and the destruction
of unwanted children was permissible, but as our civilization has aged,
it seems that such acts were no longer acceptable by rational human beings,
so that in 1948, Canada along with most other nations in the world signed
a declaration of the United Nations promising every human being the right
to life. The World Medical Association meeting in Geneve at the same time,
stated that the utmost respect for human life was to be from the moment
of conception. This declaration was re-affirmed when the World Medical
Association met in Oslo in 1970. Should we go backwards in our concern
for the life of an individual human being?
The unborn human is still a human life
and not all the wishful thinking of those advocating repeal of abortion
laws, can alter this. Those of us who would seek to protect the human who
is still to small to cry aloud for it’s own protection, have been accused
of having a 19th Century approach to life in the last third of the 20th
Century. But who in reality is using arguments of a bygone Century? It
is an incontrovertible fact of biological science – Make no Mistake – that
from the moment of conception, a new human life has been created.
Only those who allow their emotional passion
to overide their knowledge, can deny it: only those who are irrational
or ignorant of science, doubt that when a human sperm fertilizes a human
ovum a new human being is created. A new human being who carries genes
in its cells that make that human being uniquely different from any and
other human being and yet, undeniably a member, as we all are, of the great
human family. All the fetus needs to grow into a babe, a child, an old
man, is time, nutrition and a suitable environment. It is determined at
that very moment of conception whether the baby will be a boy or a girl;
which of his parents he will look like; what blood type he will have. His
whole heritage is forever fixed. Look at a human being 8 weeks after conception
and you, yes every person here who can tell the difference between a man
and a women, will be able to look at the fetus and tell me whether it is
a baby boy or a girl.
No, a fetus is not just another part of
a women’s body like an appendix or appendage. These appendages, these perfectly
formed tiny feel belong to a 10 week developed baby, not to his or her
mother.
The fetus is distinct and different and
has it’s own heart beat. Do you know that the fetus’ heart started beating
just 18 days after a new life was created, beating before the mother even
knew she was pregnant? By 3 months of pregnancy the developing baby is
just small enough to be help in the palm of a man’s hand but look closely
at this 3 month old fetus. All his organs are formed and all his systems
working. He swims, he grasps a pointer, he moves freely, he excretes urine.
If you inject a sweet solution into the water around him, he will swallaw
because he likes the taste. Inject a bitter solution and he will quit swallowing
because he does not like the taste. By 16 weeks it is obvious to all, except
those who have eyes but deliberately do not see, that this is a young human
being.
Who chooses life or death for this little
one because abortion is the taking of a human life? This fact is undeniable;
however much of the members of the Women’s Liberation Movement, the new
Feminists, Dr. Henry Morgentaler or the Canadian Medical Association President
feel about it, does not alter the fact of the matter. An incontrovertible
fact that cannot change as feelings change.
If abortion is undeniably the taking of
human life and yet sincere misguided people feel that it should be just
a personal matter between a women and the doctor, there seems to be 2 choices
open to them. (1) That they would believe that other acts of destruction
of human beings such as infanticide and homicide should be of no concern
of society and therefore, eliminate them from the criminal code. This I
cannot believe is the thinking of the majority, although the tendency for
doctors to respect the selfish desire of parents and not treat the newborn
defective with a necessary lifesaving measure, is becoming increasingly
more common. (2) But for the most part the only conclusion available to
us is that those pressing for repeal of the abortion laws believe that
there are different sorts of human beings and that by some arbitrary standard,
they can place different values on the lives of there human beings. Of
course, different human beings have different values to each of us as indi
uals: my mother means more to me than she does to you. But the right to
life of all human beings is undeniable. I do not think this is negotiable.
It is easy to be concerned with the welfare of those we know and love,
while regarding everybody else as less important and somehow, less real.
Most people would rather have heard of the death of thousands in the Honduras
flooding disaster than of a serious accident involving a close friends
or favourite relatives. That is why some are less disturbed by the slaughter
of thousands of unborn children than by the personal problems of a pregnant
women across the street. To rationalize this double standard, they pretend
to themselves that the unborn child is a less valuable human life because
it has no active social relationships and can therefore, be disposed of
by others who have an arbitrary standard of their own for the value of
a human life.
I agree that the fetus has not developed
it’s full potential as a human being: but neither have any of us. Nor will
any of us have reached that point: that point of perfect humaness, when
we die. Because some of us may be less far along the path than others,
does not give them the right to kill us. But those in favour of abortion,
assume that they have that right, the standard being arbitrary. To say
that a 10 week fetus has less value that a baby, means also that one must
consider a baby of less value than a child, a young adult of less value
than an old man. Surely one cannot believe this and still be civilized
and human. A society that does not protect its individual members is on
the lowest scale of civilized society. One of the measures of a more highly
civilized society, is its attitude towards its weaker members. If the poor,
the sick, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the helpless are not protected,
the society is not as advanced as in a society where they are protected.
T more mature the society is, the more there is respect for the dignity
and rights of all human beings. The function of the laws of the society,
is to protect and provide for all members so that no individual or group
of individuals can be victimized by another individual group. Every member
of Canadian society has a vital stake in what value system is adopted towards
its weak, aged, cripple, it’s helpless intra-uterine members; a vital stake
in who chooses life or death.
As some of you may know, in 1969, the abortion
laws were changed in Canada, so that it became legal for a doctor to perform
an abortion if a committee of 3 other doctors in an eccredited hospital
deemed that continuation of the pregnancy constituted a severe threat to
the life and health, mental or physical of the women. Threat to health
was not defined and so it is variously interpreted to mean very real medical
disease to anything that interferes with even social or economic well being,
so that any unwanted or unplanned pregnancy thus qualifies. What really
is the truth about the lasting effect of an unwanted pregnancy on the psyche
of a womem? Of course there is a difference of opinion among psychiatrists,
but if unbiased, prospective studies are examined certain facts become
obvious.
(1) The health of women who are mentally
ill before they become pregnant, is not improved by an abortion. In fact
in 1970 an official statement of the World Health Organization said, “Serious
menta isorders arise more often in women previous mental problems. Thus
the very women for whom legal abortion is considered justified on psychiatric
grounds, are the ones who have the highest risk of post-abortion psychiatric
disorders. (2) Most women who are mentally healthy before unwanted pregnancy,
despite a temporary emotional upset during the early weeks for the pregnancy,
are mentally healthy after the pregnancy whether they were aborted or carried
through to term.
Do we accept killing a human being because
of a temporary, emotional upset? All obstetricians and gynaecologists know
of many cases where the mother, be her single or married, has spoken of
abortion early in the pregnancy and later on, has confessed her gratitude
to those who have not performed the abortion. On the other hand, we have
all seen women what have been troubled, consumed with guilt and development
significant psychiatric problems following and because of abortion. I quote
Ft. John L. Grady, Medical Examiner for Florida State Attorney’s Office,
“I believe it can be stated with certainty that abortion causes more deep-seated
guilt, depression and mental illness than it ever cures”.
We used to hear a lot about the risk of
suicide among those who threatened such action if their request for abortion
was refused. How real is that risk – it is not – in fact, the suicide rate
among pregnant women be they happy of unhappy about the pregnancy, is 1/4
of the rate among non-pregnant women in child-bearing years. An accurate
10 year study was done in England on unwed mothers who requested abortions
and were refused. It was found that the suicide rate of this group was
less than that average population. In Minnesota in a 15 year period, there
were only 14 maternal suicides. 11 occurred after delivery. None were illegitimately
pregnant. All were psychotic. In contrast, among the first 8 deaths of
women aborted under the liberal law in the United Kingdon, 2 were from
suicide directly following the abortion.
Are there any medical indications for abortion??
Is it valid for a doctor to co-operate in the choice for abortion? The
late Dr. Guttmacher, one of the world leaders of the pro-abortion movement,
has stated: “Almost any women can be brought through pregnancy alive unless
she suffers from cancer or leukemia, in which case abortion is unlikely
to prolong her life much less save it.”
As an opponent to abortion, I will readily
agree, as will all those who are against abortion, that pregnancy resulting
from rape or incest is a tragedy. Rape is a detestable crime, but no sane
reasoning can place the slightest blame on the unborn child it might produce.
Incest is, if that is possible, even worse, but for centuries, traditional
Jewish law has clearly stated, that if a father sins against his daughter
(incest) that does not justify a second crime – the abortion of the product
of that sin. The act of rape or incest is the major emotional physical
trauma to the young girl or women. Should we compound the psychic scar
already inflicted on the mother by her having the guilt of destroying a
living being which was at least half her own? Throughout history, pregnant
women who for one crime or another were sentenced to death, were given
a stay of execution until after the delivery of the child: it being the
contention of courts that one could not punish the innocent child fo he
crime of the mother. Can we punish it for a crime against the mother?
If rape occurred the victim should immediately
report the incident. If this is done, early reporting of the crime will
provide greater opportunity for apprehension and conviction of the rapist,
for treatment of venereal disease and prevention of pregnancy. Let is give
our children good sex education; and let us get tough on pornography, clean
up the newstands, literature and “Adult Movies” and television programmes
which encourage crime, abusive drugs and make mockery of morality and good
behaviour and therefore, contribute to rape.
By some peculiar trick of adult logic,
proponents of abortion talk about fetal indications for act. Whatever abortion
may do for the mother, it so very obviously cannot be therapeutic for the
fetus. Death is hardly a constructive therapy. As Dr. Hellegers of John
Hopkins Hospital says, “While it is easy to feel that abortion is being
performed for the sake of the fetus, honesty requires us to recognize that
we perform it for adults”. There is no evidence to indicate that an infant
with congenital or birth defect would rather not be born since he cannot
be consulted. This evidence might exist if suicides were common among people
with congenital handicaps. However, to the contrary, these seem to value
life, since the incidence of suicide is less than that of the general population.
Can we choose death for another while life is all we ourselves know? Methods
are being developed to diagnose certain defects in the infants of mothers
at risk before the infant is born. The fluid around th etus can be sampled
and tested in a very complicated fashion. If we kill infants with confidential
defects before they are born, why not after birth, why not any human being
we declare defective? It is no surprise of course for many of us to learn
that in hospitals across North American Continent such decisions affecting
the newborn and the very elderly or those with incurable disease, are being
made. What is a defect, what is a congenital defect? Hitler considered
being 1/4 Jewish was a congenital defect incompatible with the right to
life. Perhaps you have all heard this story:
One doctor saying to another doctor, “About
the termination of a pregnancy, I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic
(venereal disease). The mother tuberculous (small lumps on skin). Of the
four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was
deaf and dumb, the fourth also tuberculous. What would you have done?”
“I would have ended the pregnancy”. “Then you would have murdered Beethoven”.
Not content with the Abortion Act of 1969
which allows 40,000 unborn children to be killed legally in our country
in 1973, many noisy and emotional people are campaigning for abortion on
request. They are aided by a crusading, misguided press and media which
continues to utter as fact, the fiction of fertile imaginative minds. We
have been told by the media that the majority of Canadians wish to have
abortion legalized but the latest census taken by the Toronto Star in March
of 1989 reports that 35% of those polled thought that abortion was already
easy to obtain, 26% thought it too hard, 19% about right and 21% had no
opinion. Men more then women thought it too hard. Even if the majority
did want it, this does not make it right. Centuries ago, most Americans
thought slavery was right. The elected leaders of this country must have
the wisdom and integrity for what is right, not for what might be politically
opportune.
One of the uttered justifications for abortion
on demand is that every women should have the mastership of her own body,
but should she? To quote Dr. Edwin Connow, “Should she have the right for
what is really judicial execution of new life – not a cat, not a chicken
but a human being – not only potential but actual”. In a society one is
not totally free to do what one will with one’s own body (we don’t have
the right to get drunk or high on drugs and drive down Young Street.) The
great concern has been shown for the innocent victims of highjacking but
what is abortion but this? The highjacking without reprieve, of an innocent
passenger out of his mother’s womb. Should we really leave the right to
hijack as a personal decision only?
Those campaigning for further liberalization
of the abortion law, hope to make abortion available and safe for all who
wish it during a pregnancy. Qualifications have been placed on the abortion
on demand routine by other groups, for example, a time limit for the duration
of pregnancy or clause that the operation be performed in an accredited
hospital. Before exploring the reality of so-called safe abortion, let
me tell you a little method of procuring an abortion. Before 13 weeks of
pregnancy, the neck of the womb is dilated – a comparatively easy procedure
in someone who has already had a child – much more difficult if childbirth
has not occurred. The products of conception in many hospitals are removed
but a suction apparatus – considered safe and better that the curettal
scraping method. After 13 weeks pregnancy, the fetus is too big to be removed
in this was and either a dangerous method of injection a solution into
the womb is carried out, this salting out method results in t mother going
into what is really a miniature labour and after a period of time, expelling
a very dead often skinned baby. In some hospitals because of the danger
of this procedure to the mother, an operation like a miniature Caesarean
section called a hysterotomy has to be performed. There area also many
other methods.
Let us now look if we can, at consequences
of such license to kill an individual too small to cry for it’s own protection.
Abortion by suction curettage is not just
as simple as a pelvic examination performed in a doctor’s office as Dr.
Morgentaler and the television programe W5 who were doing a great disservice
to young women in Canada would have us believe. In Canada as reported in
the Canadian Medical Association Journal (the Statistics from Statistics
Canada), the complication rate and this being for immediate complications
of early abortion is 4.5%. According to the Wyn report with statistics
from 12 counties, women who have a previous induced abortion have their
ability to bear children in the future permanently impaired. There is a
5-10% increase in infertility. The chances of these women having a pregnancy
in the tube increases up to 4 times. Premature delivery increases up to
50% and when one realizes that prematurity is the commonest cause for infants
being mentally or physically defective, having cerebral palsy or other
difficulties, then one realizes that those doctors doing abortions in great
numbers south of the border or across the water, even in Canada may not
be doing the women and her family a service. They will tell you that abortion
has almost no complications. What most of them will not tell you, is that
once the abortion is done they may refuse to see the women again and that
she must take her post-abortal problems elsewhere.
Those seeking repeal of the present abortion
law will rapidly point out that nevertheless, it is safer to have a legal
abortion than illegal abortions, safer for the women that is. This I don
not dispute, but here is the real rub. Liberalized abortion laws do not
eliminate illegal, back street abortions and in some cases, the overall
number of illegal abortions actually rise, usually stays stagnant, and
rarely falls. There are still people who would rather try it themselves
or go somewhere they will be completely anonymous. Another factor enters
the total number of people seeking abortion, legal or illegal rises. The
overall pregnancy rate rockets and people become careless with contraception
and a women can have 3 or 4 abortions during the time of one full term
pregnancy.
Are doctors really being kind to the girl
to allow her to choose life or death for her unborn child? In aborting
a 16 year old this year with so-called informed consent, we may be preventing
her from having even 1 or 2 children 10 years later when happily married.
No, repealing the abortion law does not make it possible for every women
to safely eliminate, what is for her, an unwanted pregnancy.
Would limiting abortions to accredited
hospitals make it safer? Yes, safer for the women, not for the fetus and
it would jeopardize the continued well being of all of the members of the
community with the gross misuse of the medical manpower, hospital facilities
and money. With almost 31,739 abortions performed in Ontario in 1989, the
cost to OHIP is about 9 million dollars. Yet to do as has been done in
the U.S.A and the United Kingdom – namely to make legal, abortions is to
turn so-called ‘backstreet butchers’ into legal operators.
Patients now go into the office through
the front door instead of the rear. I have heard it said that is abortions
became available on request, many less children would be born and we could
use the pleasant delivery suites and postnatal beds for abortions. As I
have pointed out, however, before today, liberalization of abortion does
not reduce the birth rate. There would be little increase in available
facilities or indeed doctor’s time. By the very nature of the operation
and because the longer pregnancy lasts, the more difficult it is, patients
for abortions are admitted as urgent cases or emergencies so that all other
members of the community must wait longer for their hospital bed or the
surgery they need.
Who will pay for there abortions? With
medicare, of course, it is you and I. I know one full tern pregnancy costs
most than an abortion, but not much more. And it does not cost more than
3 abortions and that is what happens when the climate or choice for life
or death of the unborn child changes. Let us use this money for constructive
purposes, not destructive. It has been suggested that abortions on request
would enable the poor to secure abortion as easily as the rich but regrettably,
it has been shown that abortion-minded physicians in great demand will
respond to the age-old commercial rules, as has already happened in the
States and in Britain.
Abortion on demand a women’s right to choose
not to continue an unplanned pregnancy would prevent there being unwanted
children in this country, so we are told. This is the final and desperate
emotional plea of people anxious, at whatever price, to escape the responsibility
for their actions. Nobody here or in Canada, wants there to be unwanted
children in this city, and in this country, and also in this world. There
is nothing more pitiable or heat rending that an unwanted fetus becoming
an unwanted babe or an unwanted babe becoming an unwanted child, or an
unwanted child becoming an embittered adult. But few would think it right
to kill or have killed an unwanted baby to prevent it from becoming an
unwanted child. Then how can they think it right to kill an unwanted fetus,
even more defenceless than a newborn babe just because it may grow into
an unwanted child.
Once a women has conceived, she already
is a parent, be it willing or otherwise. The only way she ceases it be
a parents is by a natural death or an act of killing. Killing in any form
is not the solution to so-called unwanted human beings at any age. Hitler
thought this was right. Canadians surely do not. It is a permissive and
frightened society that does not develop the expertise to control population,
civil disorder, crime, poverty, even its own sexuality but yet would mount
an uncontrolled, repeat uncontrolled, destructive attack on the defenceless,
very beginnings of life. Let us marshall all our resources financial, educational,
those of social agencies, but above all, of human concern and passion for
our fellow humans. Let us by all means, make available to all, knowledge
of conception and methods of contraception. Let us offer ourselves as loving
humans to those already in this country who are unwanted by their natural
parents. And incidentally, I am sure I don not need ac int you with some
of the facts about so-called unwanted children. The Children’s Aid Societies
in Toronto and in fact in every major city across our country have many
more potential parents anxious and willing to adopt infants and young children
than they have such children available for adoption. Let us marshall our
technology and humanity in the service of the unfortunate. And in conclusion,
I would like to read to you a letter which a member of Birthright received.
Dear Birthright:
I heard about your work in Birthright and
think you can help us. We’re in our late 20’s and have been married 7 years.
After 3 years of waiting, we became the happy adoptive parents of a precious
baby girl last fall.
This is how you can help us. Please tell
every unwed mother who places her baby for adoption how much we love her.
We think each of those girls are the most generous, charitable, kind devoted
and loving mothers on this earth. We know she must have carried her child
out of love or in this day and age should have found some way to have an
abortion. We can never thank her enough for the 9 months of time and energy
she spent for us.
Maybe if she knows that we think she’s
the most loving person in this world we will never know, it will help us
both.
As Jenny grows older, we are telling her
she has two sets of parents. We’ll tell her how she came to be our child
this way. Her first mommy didn’t have a home or a daddy to help love and
care for her. She loved her so much that she just couldn’t let her daughter
grow up without love of two parents and all the things that make a happy
home. We’ll tell Jenny that her 1st mommy thinks of her often and wonders
how she is. She will always love her baby.
Maybe our thoughts will someday reach Jenny’s
1st mommy. What she did was an act of faith in mankind, hope for her daughter’s
future and love toward us. We think the strength of her love enabled her
to place her precious baby with us. We have faith that as Jenny grows up
learning she was placed out of love and not abandoned by her 1st mommy,
both Jenny and she will be at peace.