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COMMENTARY
May 16, 2012
Tight lips on abortion
Of all the topics under the sun, perhaps the one I least enjoy writing about is abortion. I am not alone in this. The extraordinary efforts made by advocates of abortion-on-demand to suppress open discussion in public forums attest to its unpleasantness. When discussion becomes inevitable, they shift attention away from abortion itself to related issues. We find ourselves instead discussing "women's rights" and the conceit that the "fetus" is part of the woman's body, on the analogy of a cyst or tumour, is then asserted with considerable stridency.We have heard plenty of that within the House of Commons recently, through efforts to shut down Stephen Woodworth's motion for Parliament to reconsider the very significant issue of when human life begins, in light of contemporary science. The outrage has come not only from the opposition benches, among NDP and Liberal parties that have been purged of "pro-life" MPs over the last few years. In a shocking intervention, delivered inappropriately during private members' hour on April 26, the Conservative whip, Gordon O'Connor, turned on his own backbencher with some virulence. While playing to the pro-choice gallery, by repeating arguments of theirs that are less than true, he made clear that the Harper government would do anything necessary to keep abortion from being debated. In the course of his diatribe, O'Connor asserted that Woodworth's motion would advance the re-criminalization of abortion under Canada's homicide laws, when abortion was never in that section of our Criminal Code. He claimed the matter was settled by the Supreme Court in 1988, when the justices vacated all legal restrictions on abortion then in force. But that decision left Parliament free to draft new legislation within criteria the justices specified. O'Connor declared that Parliament was "not a laboratory," nor a "house of faith," nor an "academic setting," nor a "hospital." But no one ever argued it was any of these things. The argument is instead that, if Parliament can strip an unborn child of legal personhood, then Parliament can restore it. Parliament is also entitled to understand what it is doing. There is no avoiding the issue, except through suppression. The pretence that the commission of an abortion is "a moral decision" in which "the conscience of the individual must be paramount and take precedence over that of the state" is nonsense. The courts have long experience in dealing with conflicting individual claims. That is their function, after all. And in this case, not only the pregnant woman, but also the child she is carrying, and the man who is that child's father, are parties to the affair. We may make the woman's decision final, by law, as we have in effect done. But to pretend she is the only person whose conscience counts is, let us say, unfriendly. To further pretend that all women share the same interests and views, and that opposition to unrestricted abortion is ipso facto the ancient male attack on women is similarly insane. Look over the 20,000 or so demonstrators at the annual march for life in Ottawa last week. A tiny minority of them were old geezers like me. The plurality of women, and especially young women, was clear at a single glance. To say, in the manner of certain parliamentarians, that one is speaking "for women," is not merely absurd. It implies that women are incapable of moral reasoning on any matter affecting themselves. This goes beyond misogyny to the outer limits of the obtuse. O'Connor's claim that abortion is a "medically necessary procedure," that "will always be with us," and therefore beyond the reach of law, is more ignorant blather. Theft, extortion, impaired driving, smoking within nine metres of the entrance to a public building and terrorist bombings are among the many solecisms that will always be with us. This does not preclude making laws against them, let alone discussing the principles behind those laws. Empirical science now shows, as Margaret Somerville was recently explaining in these pages, that a "fetus" can feel pain 16 weeks into gestation. Indeed, ultrasound and other techniques show us, quite vividly, many other things about the unborn child that we might not want to know. But in the end, truth must win out, according at least to my received values. Given that we have laws against killing animals painfully, then granting the feminist argument that this fetus is not really human, we might still consider a law that requires abortionists to administer an anaesthetic to the fetus before painfully doing it in. That was a thought experiment. Imagine the outcry if some backbench MP presented that as a fully adumbrated private member's bill. Yet, in logic, working entirely from feminist and animal-rights premises, there could be no possible objection. The truth is sometimes like an open wound. It hurts; it can be extremely unpleasant. Yet, in the end, we must deal with it, for truth is something that does not go away. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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