MOVE BEYOND

News release - January 22, 2002
For Immediate release
It is time to move beyond Morgentaler’s narrow agenda

Ottawa - Canadian abortionist Henry Morgentaler cannot leave well enough alone. He continues to market his anti-woman, quick-fix solution of abortion to a shrinking audience. Is abortion more popular among women or among the men who want to get them pregnant, but without accepting the long-term responsibilities associated with having children?

Do most women want legal access to abortion because they think abortion is a wonderful option or out of fear that, without it, they will be left by the father to accept alone the responsibilities of pregnancy and child-rearing? Is abortion ultimately a woman’s agenda, or a self-serving male agenda? If abortion is the best we can offer a woman facing a crisis pregnancy in the 21st century, Canada can hardly lay claim to being a mature society.

The evidence is mounting of the dangerous effects of abortion for women: a higher risk of breast cancer, emotional and psychological trauma, child abuse due to problems bonding with subsequent children, sterility, substance abuse, and more. That is the legacy of Morgentaler. Is that a legacy that warrants the Order of Canada, as has been proposed in a recent Globe & Mail article? Tim Heslip of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, wrote “I don't think he should receive the Order of Canada. I think we should be asking him some tough questions about his motivations.”

If Morgentaler and his fawning supporters such as the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League saw abortion as only one small part of a robust women’s agenda, rather than the centre-piece, they would not oppose legislation requiring parental consent, informed consent, the protection of conscience rights for health care workers, the requirement to save a baby who is born alive after an attempted abortion.

In today’s secular Canada, it is strange to see abortion treated by some as a religious sacrament and a sacred cow. Canadian communities are filled with people who are doing their part to offer loving, constructive alternatives to women facing crisis pregnancies. They don’t want their governments distracted by an increasingly frenetic Morgentaler, who wants them to devote more limited health care resources to his remarkably narrow agenda.

For more information, call Maurice Vellacott at (613) 992-1899; Elsie Wayne at 947-4571; or Paul Steckle at (613) 992-8234.