The Abortion Debate

 

You need only head to 65 Bank St. to witness the so-called “abortion debate” in full swing. 

 

A security guard stands outside of the Morgentaler Clinic, Ottawa’s only private abortion provider, ready to intervene if the protesters gathered on the other side of the street get too close to clientele as they enter the building. The protesters carry signs depicting fully-developed fetuses, informing passersby that these are “human, too.”

 

One protestor wears a sign around her neck that reads: “I regret my abortion.”

 

More than 20 years after the Supreme Court ruling that made abortion legal in Canada, controversy continues to swirl around the question of whether the induced abortion of an unborn child is right or wrong.

 

This is a debate fueled by religious beliefs, ethics and questions of human rights.

 

 

 

Francis is the woman holding the sign proclaiming she regrets having had an abortion. She says she hopes to speak with young women entering the clinic, to inform them that “anything is better” than going through with an abortion.

 

“I didn’t have an informed choice when I made that decision,” she says. “It changed my whole life. It brought me to wanting to kill myself. I think about the child all the time.”

 

She says she worried at the time of her pregnancy that her baby would be born with fetal alcohol syndrome and she wouldn’t have had the support or resources necessary to raise it.

 

“I met a woman later who had fetal alcohol syndrome, a beautiful native woman. I had named my child, in my heart, later, Theresa,” Francis says. “[This woman’s] name was Theresa. I sort of thought, ‘Well, that could’ve been my child.’ ”

 

Francis says not only does she regret her decision every day, but her abortion left her infertile. She is married, and has not been able to conceive again.

 

It is not uncommon for a woman to regret having an abortion, says Denise Mountenay, founder of Canada Silent No More, an organization that reaches out to women who suffer post-abortion. Mountenay says many women experience post-traumatic stress disorder after having an abortion and can wind up infertile after going through with the procedure.

 

“We know from our own experience and eyewitness accounts about the whole issue,” she says. “We believed lies, like it’s not a baby and it’s a safe procedure, and then learned the truth about fetal development and realized that abortion didn’t just end our pregnancy, it killed our babies – our children – who can never be replaced.  Abortion is not a medical necessity, but a form of birth control. It’s not a black and white issue, but blood red.”

 

The idea that an unborn child is a human being with the right to life is intrinsic to the pro-life or anti-abortion viewpoint. But according to Paul Klotz, executive director of the volunteer human rights organization the Right to Life Association of Toronto, this argument is not always rooted in religious belief, a common misconception.

 

“Abortion is ethically and morally wrong because it involves the premeditated taking of an innocent human life,” he explains. “Because the pre-born child is a living human being, she is entitled to the same human rights as anyone else, and foremost among these rights is the right to life. Therefore nobody has the right to take the preborn’s life, just as nobody has the right to take anyone else’s life. These beliefs can be based on religion, but can stand alone on scientific fact and pure reason and logic.”

 

 

According to Joyce Arthur, co-ordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, a political activist group that advocates for women’s reproductive rights, misinformation about the consequences of abortion is a huge problem.

 

“The misinformation that the anti-choice spreads about abortion, like saying that abortion is dangerous, that it’s going to cause breast cancer or infertility or subsequent miscarriages . . . none of it is true,” she says. “To tell women who have just learned that they’re unexpectedly pregnant or are considering an abortion, women

who are kind of in a vulnerable position, maybe emotionally upset, ‘Oh, if you have an abortion, you’re going to get breast cancer,’ that’s totally irresponsible.”

 

She says the National Institute of Health in the States has come to the conclusion that there is no evidence to support a link between having an abortion and then developing breast cancer later.

 

Juliana Pulford, the counsellor at the Morgentaler Clinic, says many women reveal to her their fears about things like infertility during the mandatory pre-abortion information session, having been misinformed about the procedure. She says the operation is actually very safe, but the stigmas surrounding it can be a huge barrier for women to overcome.

 

“We, as a culture, do that thing where we shame women about it,” she says. “We teach them not to talk about it. We teach them that it somehow makes them less of a good person. And we internalize that so when it does happen the first reaction is, ‘How can this happen to me?’ If we don’t talk about it, we have no way of knowing that it is in fact our sister, our mother and our friends and the people we work with.”

 

There are two main arguments behind the pro-choice position: a woman should have both complete control over her body as well as access to resources at any stage of reproductive health, from contraception, to safe abortions, to support groups and financial help if she chooses to bring a baby to term.

 

Pro-choicers are not necessarily “pro-abortion,” but will support a woman no matter what decision she makes when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.

 

“We believe that a woman has the right to determine her future and what happens with her body,” says Erin Leigh, acting executive director of Canadians for Choice.  “In the case of abortion, we know the dire consequences when the service is not safe, legal and accessible.  If a woman is certain that she cannot carry on with a pregnancy, she will choose abortion – whether it is legal or not. Women’s lives are threatened and their health endangered when abortion is not available. Back-alley abortions are an atrocious part of our past – we need to keep them there and we need to make sure that there are hospitals throughout the whole country that are offering safe and accessible abortion services.”

  

There is one thing that both pro-lifers and pro-choicers agree on. At the personal and political level, open discussion on the “abortion debate,” from questions of accessibility to legality to stigma, is essential.

“It should be discussed,” Klotz says. “Most Canadians are extremely uninformed about some of the principal facts regarding abortion.”