Morgentaler's Order of Canada
Jul. 3rd, 2008 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jawnbcOn Canada Day morning, something unusual happened in the Canuck media: there was speculation about someone being named a member of the Order of Canada. And no doubt making Dr. Henry Morgentaler a Member of the Order will stand as one of the most controversial.
Because Dr. Morgentaler's lifework has been about providing women access to abortion. Over 20 years, this Auschwitz survivor set out to end a bloodbath of women's mysery at the hands of the back alley abortionist. He performed the procedures, went to jail, and kept agitating socially and legally until the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the existing abortion statute in 1988. He is a brave man. I am pleased he has been honoured before he died (he's in his 80s).
I want to make something clear here: I think abortion is terrible. I know and love women who have faced the decision to end a pregnancy. None did it cavalierly or callously; in fact, those who've shared in detail with me their stories found the experience heartbreaking. Abortion isn't fun.
But so is being tossed into the streets by your fundamentalist family for being a slut. As is bringing a child into your abusive partnership as you are trying to muster the means (spiritual and economic) to get yourself free. Or finding out that trick who raped you also knocked you up.
Or realizing a stoopid, careless decision to leave it in the drawer, or missing a few pills, or getting a little too drunk, makes it clear you cannot bring a child into this world and care for it. And there's no one to help, either.
I don't believe in abortion "on demand". There are dangers in aborting viablefetuses babies. There is a no turning back point. Sometimes things are what they are. But in Canada, rather than having a series of convoluted, mindlessly detailed laws made up by zealots, we trust our physicians to develop policies that use science and data to determine when and how best to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Ditto access to a medically safe abortion: if someone is biologically capable of becoming pregnant, I think they alone get to decide if they terminate that pregnancy. Everyone else simply gets to have an opinion.It is unacceptable to me that women be put in those positions because they have the Easy Bake Oven™, only to have others endeavour to tell them what they must do.
For me, Henry Morgentaler isn't an abortionist so much a feminist--or a true humanist. He believes that when women die trying to get abortions, fetuses still die. How does that help anyone? I would be heartbroken if my mother or sister or sister-in-law or cousines or aunts or nieces or friends died during such a desperate act.
In a perfect world, birth control would be infallible and rape would cease to exist. We're not there yet. Abortion is terrible. The experience of taking the decision. Women who do aren't.
And don't get me started on those right-to-life demonstrators who shriek "give us your baby" but never seem make any effort to pick up the disabled or non-white ones languishing in care. When you clear up that backlog (and no returns; if you bore it you'd have to keep it too), dust off those signs again....
Because Dr. Morgentaler's lifework has been about providing women access to abortion. Over 20 years, this Auschwitz survivor set out to end a bloodbath of women's mysery at the hands of the back alley abortionist. He performed the procedures, went to jail, and kept agitating socially and legally until the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the existing abortion statute in 1988. He is a brave man. I am pleased he has been honoured before he died (he's in his 80s).
I want to make something clear here: I think abortion is terrible. I know and love women who have faced the decision to end a pregnancy. None did it cavalierly or callously; in fact, those who've shared in detail with me their stories found the experience heartbreaking. Abortion isn't fun.
But so is being tossed into the streets by your fundamentalist family for being a slut. As is bringing a child into your abusive partnership as you are trying to muster the means (spiritual and economic) to get yourself free. Or finding out that trick who raped you also knocked you up.
Or realizing a stoopid, careless decision to leave it in the drawer, or missing a few pills, or getting a little too drunk, makes it clear you cannot bring a child into this world and care for it. And there's no one to help, either.
I don't believe in abortion "on demand". There are dangers in aborting viable
For me, Henry Morgentaler isn't an abortionist so much a feminist--or a true humanist. He believes that when women die trying to get abortions, fetuses still die. How does that help anyone? I would be heartbroken if my mother or sister or sister-in-law or cousines or aunts or nieces or friends died during such a desperate act.
In a perfect world, birth control would be infallible and rape would cease to exist. We're not there yet. Abortion is terrible. The experience of taking the decision. Women who do aren't.
And don't get me started on those right-to-life demonstrators who shriek "give us your baby" but never seem make any effort to pick up the disabled or non-white ones languishing in care. When you clear up that backlog (and no returns; if you bore it you'd have to keep it too), dust off those signs again....
