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.