A rchive Date
[ 03-07-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[Careful words about abortion
By MARIANNE MEED WARD
Toronto Sun
July 3, 2000
Don't look now, but the U.S. Supreme Court has done something utterly senseless on abortion: overturned a Nebraska law last week that banned partial birth abortions.
Five judges (with four dissenters) ruled the law was too broad and might prevent legal late term abortions. The law allowed for exceptions where the mother's life was threatened, but the court said it didn't protect the health of the mother, as required by the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.
Her life is protected, but not her health? Yeah, I'm scratching my head too. But at least in the U.S. they're having a debate. Here in Canada, we can't even agree on terms. Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Canada's patron saint of abortion, doesn't like the phrase "partial-birth abortion." "It is a misnomer because it is not a question of delivering a child," he said in a newspaper interview commenting on the U.S. decision. "It is a question of an abortion at a late stage of pregnancy."
You decide: in clinical terms, the procedure involves moving the fetus into the birth canal and vacuuming out the contents of its brain. In Nebraska's terms, a physician "partially delivers vaginally a living unborn child before killing the unborn child and completing the delivery."
As George Orwell wrote in his essay "Politics and the English Language," sometimes we use words to obscure unpleasant truths, to help us "defend the indefensible." Like calling civilian deaths in war "collateral damage." Or calling the termination of a pregnancy in the birth canal a "late-term abortion."
But Morgentaler argues that "partial-birth abortion" is a phrase designed to scare people and to portray what a "terrible, terrible thing abortion is."
Well, no matter what you call it, if that procedure doesn't scare you, you've got the pulse of an eggplant.
But it's perfectly legal here, thanks to the fact that we have no law on abortion in Canada. Choose your words once more: that either makes us the most progressive nation on Earth or the most immoral. I'm inclined to think the latter, and seemingly so do most Canadians. A Gallup poll last year found that the majority want some kind of restrictions on abortion; only 28% want none.
But because there's no law, and none in sight, we're not even debating this issue. It's gone away, kind of like an unwanted fetus following a visit to the clinic. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about.
Here's a modest proposal that likely won't endear me to either to side in this debate: ban anything after the point of viability, (about 24 weeks) except in cases where mom's life is threatened. Pro-choicers won't like it, because it introduces restrictions where there were none. Pro-life won't like it because it won't eliminate most abortions.
True enough. According to Statistics Canada figures from 1995 - the most recent year for which figures are comprehensively broken down - 67% of abortions occur in the first trimester (under 12 weeks). Less than one-quarter of one percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks.
And despite all the horror stories about 13-year-olds raped by their uncles who need safe abortions, not coat hangers, the largest group of women getting abortions are in their 20s - almost 40% of the total. These are presumably women who are old enough to recognize the business end of a condom and know how to take an oral contraceptive. One wonders why they don't.
By contrast, less than one-half of one percent of abortions are performed on girls under 15. And only 15% are performed on women over 30.
Another tidbit from the stats: 15% of abortions are obtained by married women. Talk about failure to aid women in need. This is a feminist issue, all right, but feminists are on the wrong side.
Call me a pragmatist or call me immoral, but it's time for both sides to give ground to bring justice. Pro-life inflexibility brings no protection to the fetuses they seek to defend, and pro-choice inflexibility turns a blind eye to the horrors of the worst forms of abortion.
Marianne Meed Ward, a freelance writer with an interest in social and ethical issues, appears Mondays. Her e-mail is:pward@interlog.com
 World Fact Book (CIA))]
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