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"Each day of the week this medical drama, or one very similar is
enacted in communities. Perhaps it is taking place at this very minute
in your town or city.
Mr. and Mrs. R. live in a northern Ontario city, have three
children and sought permanent protection against unwanted
pregnancy. Mr. R. had a vasectomy, and although he was found to
be infertile on a subsequent sperm count, Mrs. R. became
pregnant a few months later. A repeat sperm count was positive
and a physical examination showed that the vans deferens, had
been severed on one side only. The other side had been
temporarily occluded due to swelling at the operative site,thus
leading to the previously false negative sperm count.
Mrs. R. sough an abortion of this pregnancy that she and her
husband had tried so hard to prevent. He physician informed her
that this was not possible in their city since the theraputic
abortion committee passed very few applications, and then only
in instances where the woman already had six or more children,
or where a psychiatrist had concluded that she was likely to
become insane if she could not have an abortion.
Mrs. R. was forced to make two trips to Toronto, hundreds of
miles away, at her own expense, to procure an abortion. The
first trip was necessary in order for her to be seen by the
gynecologist. She then returned home to await the deliberation
of the the theraputic abortion committee. On the second trip the
procedure was carried out in a Toronto hospital.
Mr. and Mrs. R. were fortunate. They had the financial resources
that enabled Mrs. R. to go to such extraordinary lengths to get the help
she needed. But many Canadians are not so fortunate. These are the women
who do not have the money to travel great distances to get abortions
denied them in their own communities. They include married women who
have children and whose contraceptive methods prove ineffective, as well
as adolescent girls who get pregnant unwittingly, out of sexual
ignorance.
What are the options open to such a woman? She is unable to get
a legal medical service from her local hospital because that instution
interprets our abortion law in a manner which denies her the treatment
that her physician recommends. Keep in mind that her health insurance
premiums support that hospital. She cannot afford to travel to a larger
centre where the same abortion law is interpreted in a manner which
might enable her to receive help.
Her list of options has already shrunk considerably. Unless she
is willing to seek out and pay for the services of an illegal
abortionist, she must submit to a state of compulsory pregnancy. Since
very few married women with children are prepared to give up their
new-born babies for adoption, this woman and her mate become, by
definition, parents by compulsion.
As Garret Hardin ("Abortion - Or Compulsory Pregnancy?" Journal
of Marriage and the Family, xxx (May, 1968) 246-251) has pointed out, if
the state denies a woman a safe legal abortion in the early stages of
pregnancy before viability, it is accurate to say that she enters a
state of compulsory pregnancy. By the same token, abortion laws which
allow hospital abortion committees to deny women safe legal abortions
are actually compulsory pregnancy laws, even thought that legislation is
interpreted elsewhere in a way which makes abortion services available
to unwillingly pregnant women.
At first glance, the label "compulsory pregnancy" seems unduly
emotive. Phrases like "pro-abortion" and "pro-life" inflame the passions
and raise the temperature of the debate as well as the blood pressure of
the debaters, but they shed little light on this complex subject. Is the
term "compulsory pregnancy" all that inflammatory? It is true that the
state did not force these couples to have sexual intercourse on the
night that the woman became unwillingly pregnant; nor did the physicians
on the theraputic abortion committee do anything to thwart the couple's
attempts to contracept. Yet a hospital's legally constituted theraputic
abortion committee, in denying any woman a safe medical abortion in the
early stages of pregnancy, clearly intends her to remain pregnant
against her will. Is not the label "compulsory pregnant" an appropriate
one to attach to that state of affairs?"
Compulsory Parenthood - The Truth about Abortion
(Wendell W. Watters, M.D.) 1976
Family planning has been called "a new and important freedom in
the world." (Frank W. Notestein, "Zero Population Growth: What is it?"
Family Planning Perspective, II, (June 1970) No. 3, 22.) In 1968 the UN
International Conference on Human Rights declared that "Any choice or
decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest
with the family itself and cannot be made by anyone else." It then went
on to state that this parental right to free choice would remain
illusory unless couples were aware of the alternatives.
On the basis of availability fo adequate educational and
clinical services alone, family planning has a long way to go. Any
freedom of choice is only a paper right unless the individual has the
knowledge and the tools with which to exercise that freedom. But even if
adequated educational and clinical services were universally available,
would family planning, in the presence of restrictive abortion laws,
become the human freedom envisioned in the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights? Contraceptives are not always available, unwanted
pregnancy still occurs because of human fallibility, and because no
known method of contraception is completely foolproof, a fact to which
thousands of couples can testify. In family planning, a freedom that
stops at conception is a non-freedom. Until safe legal abortion
services, completely free of all medico-legal harassment, are available
to all womean who choose to use the abortion option, the UN
Declaration's family planning clause confers a paper right on the women
of the world.
(Cont'd next message)
Compulsory Parenthood - The Truth about Abortion
Wendell W. Watters, M.D. (1976)
In a few jurisdictions abortion is available on the request
of the woman herself, and at the recommendation of her physician. In
many countries abortion is illegal under all circumstances. In other
countries it is legal under certain circumstances, but never simply on
the grounds that the woman wishes not to be pregnant. IN CANADA, FOR
EXAMPLE, UNDER SECTION 251 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE, ABORTIONS ARE LEGAL IF
THERE IS A RISK TO THE WOMAN'S HEALTH IN CONTINUING THE PREGNANCY, AND
ONLY IF THE ABORTION IS APPROVED BY A THERAPUTIC ABORTION COMMITTEE IN A
HOSPITAL.
The criteria by which a committee operates are never made public
and the committees rarely interview the women herself who,
interestingly, cannot appeal a negative decision. The physician members
of a committee that denies a woman a safe, legal abortion are not
charged with any medico-legal responsibility for her subsequent welfare
of that of the child. Peculiarly, this responsibility continues to
reside with her own physician, whose attempts to have the pregnancy
terminated have been blocked. Few Canadians realize how effectively the
government and various power blocs make it almost impossible for many
Canadian women to take advantage of our ostensibly liberal abortion law.
The law does not require a hospital to provide abortion services, and
many do not, especially in areas where anti-abortion power blocs control
local hospital policies.
Abortion is a moral issue; more accurately, it is many moral
issues. The central question is the value placed on the foetus. Can
there be such a thing as foetal rights? This one question has pushed
aside other ethical issues.
Abortion is not an acceptable means of birth control, nor is it
individually or socially desirable. We need to reduce the need for
abortion through improved sex education programs in schools, additional
training for health-care professionals in family planning, and research
into contraceptive technology. Unless a technically perfect
contraceptive, and a perfectly motivated human being are developed, the
need for abortion services will stay.
The abortion issue also forces us to deal with other questions
about human reproductivity; questions that go beyond the matter of
whether a nonviable foetus is human or has a soul. How important is the
act of creating a new human life? Should society persist in the
'laissea-faire' approach in which a new life is an almost automatic
consequence of unprotected sex? Or should society expect some judgment
on the part of the sexually active couple who choose to become parents?
-(Compulsory Parenthood - The Truth about Abortion)
Author: Wendell W. Watters, M.D. 1976