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How Late Is Too Late?; Canada's pro-choice camp still ignores the most important moral question that abortion doctors face:
National Post
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Page: A14
Section: Issues & Ideas
Byline: Jonathan Kay
Column: Jonathan Kay
Source: National Post
Series: R. Vs. Morgentaler, 20 Years Later

Abortion is the one subject on which otherwise tolerant, open-minded people cannot agree to disagree. If you truly believe that life begins at conception, then what happens in Canada's abortion clinics and wards approximately 100,000 times every year is, quite literally, a species of genocide. If you take the opposite view -- that a fetus is a component of its female host without legal rights or human identity -- then your opponents will strike you as nothing but ignorant misogynists.

That is why we have precious little "debate" on the subject of abortion. Instead, we have sloganeering by two distinct and mutually hostile ideological tribes.

On Friday, Canada's pro-choice camp convened what could best be described as a convention of tribal elders -- middle-aged and elderly champions of the movement, including Henry Morgentaler, whose victory in the Supreme Court of Canada served to dismantle the criminal law regime surrounding abortion 20 years ago this week.

The University of Toronto Law School's "Symposium to Mark the 20th Anniversary of R. vs. Morgentaler" was an odd event. On one hand, it was organized by, and sponsored by, the law school's own faculty --and so took on the superficial trappings of a normal academic symposium. But since not one of the 15 abortion doctors, scholars, writers and politicians who spoke took a pro-life stand, or even dealt in any serious way with pro-life arguments, the event was in substance a prochoice pep rally.

The general consensus seemed to be that opposition to abortion is a mental defect, not a bona fide policy position. Osgoode Hall Law School professor Shelley Gavigan declared categorically that "The unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice -- and that voice is hers." The fact that some of her students didn't see things her way only meant that "I have some work to do on the pedagogical front."

CBC.ca writer Heather Mallick likewise expressed approval of student associations that cut off funding to pro-life groups-- because the rights of Canadian women "are not up for debate." She also theorized that pro-life stir-rings in the mainstream media were mostly the result of over-the-hill male editors seeking to control through repression the lithesome bodies that, in their decrepitude, they could no longer enjoy in the bedroom. And Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett put up a slide entitled "Role of an elected official," which declared that politicians have "no right" to oppose abortion -- because "That is the responsibility of women."

And yet, beneath the veneer of unity, I did manage to detect a strain of underlying tension. It came out on those few occasions when a speaker alluded, however obliquely, to that taboo question in the pro-choice camp:How late is too late?

This should be a question of special interest to anyone who's managed to escape the tribal polarization of the abortion debate. Squeezed between the two poles are a few of us who think a woman should have a broad right to abort her fetus when it is an insentient bundle of cells, but are appalled by the fact that Canada, alone among industrialized nations, permits "socially motivated" abortion (i.e., the child is merely unwanted or inconvenient) in the second and even third trimesters. Yet in a full day of presentations purporting to comprehensively evaluate the state of abortion in this country, no one at this symposium took on this one disturbing, and truly unique, feature of our country's legal landscape.

Even in the Q&A, the issue came up only twice -- and then, only indirectly. The first instance came when an audience member bemoaned the fact that doctors in Western nations generally refused to perform abortions after 24 weeks --and asked, with apparently genuine curiosity, why this was so. The panelist who answered, National Abortion Federation director Dawn Fowler, refused to supply a reason, merely demurring that "It will be interesting to have the physicians appearing later today [as speakers] comment on that." (None did.)

A few hours later, a male student rose to ask legendary Canadian abortion doctor Garson Romalis whether late-term unborn children should be supplied painkillers as part of the abortion procedure. Romalis dismissed any evidence that aborted fetuses feel pain -- and with it the entire issue--in a single sentence.

What I found interesting is that, even as they avoided this essential question, several of the symposium speakers vigorously assured the audience that very few abortions take place in Canada "for social reasons" beyond 20 weeks, and none beyond 24 weeks.

No doubt, the data show this to be true. But why was this fact seen as so important as to deserve emphasis? Similarly, why did Gavigan take such pains to dismiss anecdotes of women having abortions for capricious reasons (e.g., bikini time on an upcoming beach vacation) as "preposterous misogynistic fables"?

If it is really true that "the unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice," then presumably they have the right to assume a voice that is selfish and vain. If the "dominant ideology of the unborn child" is a spurious construct invented by patriarchal moralists, why does it matter if that so-called unborn child weighs one pound or five? Why strike such defensive postures against an issue that no one in the room saw fit to discuss?

The answer to this last question, I think, is that these women are not so doctrinaire as they pretend. Within their own minds, they do wrestle with these important moral questions -- as any intelligent person must. But when in public, they censor themselves. Locked in what they feel to be a tribal culture war against pro-lifers, the pro-choice camp allows itself no nuance. This is essentially the reason Canada has no abortion law: Any stirring of legislative action arouses such tribal war fury among pro-choicers as to send politicians scurrying.

As for the next generation, I am more hopeful.

The Gavigan-Mallick-Bennett generation came by their militancy honestly: by witnessing the Byzantine and arbitrary barriers to early-term abortion faced by Canadian women in the pre-Morgentaler era. They also bore witness to the medical carnage caused by self-induced and back-alley abortions (a phenomenon Romalis described in detail in what was easily the most powerful presentation of Friday's symposium). For these prochoice advocates, a woman's right to choose must be unfettered. Behind any law, they will see the hand of the old patriarchy.

But the same isn't true for today's 20-and 30-something Canadian women, who have grown up in a Canada where accessible, state-funded abortion is generally taken for granted. Perhaps this new generation will be the one to strike the sort of proper moral balance reflected in the legislation of other Western countries.

In 10 years, I like to think, I'll be attending a "Symposium to Mark the 30th Anniversary of R. vs. Morgentaler" where the participants will be trading not only slogans, but morally serious ideas as well.

jkay@nationalpost.com

Illustration:
• Color Photo: Illustration By Julia Breckenreid / (See hardcopy for Illustration)

Idnumber: 200801290055
Edition: National
Story Type: Column; Series
Length: 1149 words
Keywords: ABORTION; ANNIVERSARIES; MENTAL HEALTH
Illustration Type: CP

PRODUCTION FIELDS
NDATE: 20080129
NUPDATE: 20080129
DOB: 20080129
POSITION: 1