Monita Ranu's views on abortion have several problems. First, by trying to present abortion as exclusively a matter of women's rights, she grossly over-simplifies the issue. The E.U. recognizes that it is not strictly a women's rights issue and accepts that fetal life and sentience must be taken into account after the first trimester. Hence the E.U. limits abortion on demand to the first trimester and allows late term abortions only with medical approval. We must also recognize the rights of doctors who reject abortion and will neither perform nor refer. Their rights cannot be trampled either.
Ms. Ranu's argument that we do not know if "a fetus should be considered a human life or not" is a bogus attempt to obscure the obvious. According to the science of genetics, my wife carried four humans not chimpanzees from the moment of conception. Thus, the real question about abortion is, 'Are we justified in killing this self-evidently human life?' There may be some tragic cases where it is necessary, but there is no logical reason to extend this practice automatically to all cases. If we decide to define human by societal standards, then Ms. Ranu will have to accept that society is very split on this issue (60/40 in favour of first trimester only; IpsosReid, (4/7/2012) and also accept that those who oppose abortion or seek to limit it - many of whom are women - will have a legitimate voice in this decision.
Ms. Ranu claims that a giving a fetus rights strips 17.4 million women of theirs. As noted above, the issue is not just about women's rights. Indeed, the Supreme Court never declared abortion to be an unrestricted right and settled the issue forever. It said criminalizing abortion was unconstitutional - which is a very different thing from a constitutional right. Moreover, the SC referred the matter back to parliament to devise a law that met its standards (Globe and Mail, 25/9/20012). Doing so is not unconstitutional. It is simply following the directions of the SC.
Everyone recognizes that motherhood is special - which is exactly why it cannot be treated like a disease, injury or inconvenience or any other rights issue. Woodworth's attempt to debate the issue in parliament is precisely what we need in order to clarify our thinking so we can reach a workable consensus.
Ian Kluge
Prince George
