January 30, 2012
By Joyce
Arthur, Executive Director, Abortion Rights Coalition of
Canada (http://www.arcc-cdac.ca)
(Originally published Jan 30 in
the Guelph Mercury under the title "There's
No Need to Re-open the Abortion Debate in Canada" Links have been added to the
version below, and the global stats on unsafe abortion have
been updated with the latest data).
The pro-choice movement is tired of anti-abortion advocates
who just don’t get it. Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth and
several of his colleagues in Parliament have recently felt
free to “re-open the abortion debate”— at great risk to the
safety and human rights of all pregnant women, not
just those seeking abortion.
Woodworth
issued a challenge
on Jan. 12 to advocates of legal abortion to provide medical
evidence proving that fetuses do not become human beings until
birth. This challenge stems from his recent media
campaign to have Parliament review our Criminal Code
because it only bestows legal “human being” status on infants
born alive.
Like
the rest of the anti-abortion movement, Woodworth shows no
recognition whatsoever of the human rights of women, or how
giving rights to fetuses would harm pregnant women.
In
the United States, where fetuses DO have legal personhood
rights in at
least
38 states (mostly through “fetal homicide” laws
supposedly aimed at third parties who assault pregnant women),
the laws are used primarily to prosecute
pregnant
women for drug or alcohol abuse, refusing a Caesarean,
or even experiencing a stillbirth. These unjust and cruel
prosecutions tend to scare pregnant women away from pre-natal
care or even push them to have an abortion. They also turn
pregnant women into third-class citizens whose rights are
subordinate to those of their fetus.
If
fetuses had rights, any wanted pregnancy where something goes
wrong could subject women to criminal prosecution for harming
or “murdering” their fetus. But there is never any guarantee
that you won’t have a miscarriage or stillbirth, or a serious
complication that risks your life or health, or any number of
unpredictable scenarios. This is of little concern to most
anti-abortion advocates, however, who would actually force
women to sacrifice their lives to have babies.
Giving
rights to fetuses or banning abortion does nothing to “protect
the unborn” or women. Every country in the world where
abortion is illegal has a well-developed abortion underground,
and abortion is generally more common in countries where it’s
illegal than where it’s legal. Almost half of all abortions in
the world (49%
of
43.8 million) are unsafe and mostly illegal. In the U.S.
where abortion is now heavily restricted, women will travel
hundreds of miles for abortion care, use their rent or food
money to pay for it, go before judges to get permission,
listen to mandated anti-abortion propaganda, walk past
aggressive and bullying protesters, and even huddle for hours
in a car in the clinic’s parking lot until the bomb threat is
over. In short, most
women
will do whatever it takes to get an abortion, regardless
of the difficulty or risks.
To
come back to Woodworth’s challenge about whether the fetus is
human, he completely misses the point because he’s confusing
the medical/biological aspects of “what is a human being” with
the legal/social aspects of personhood. The biological status
of the fetus is irrelevant since women need and have abortions
anyway. However, given Woodworth’s fixation on the lack of
legal rights for 9-month fetuses about to be born, it bears
repeating that abortions after 20 weeks are rare in Canada and
done only under exceptional circumstances, largely in cases of
fetal abnormality where the fetus cannot survive after birth.
As
it happens, the Criminal Code’s definition of human being that
defines personhood at birth is even more correct today than it
was 400 years ago under common law. Women now have established
constitutional rights in Canada under our Charter of
Rights and Freedoms, including the right to life,
liberty, bodily security, conscience, and equality, all of
which are directly implicated in women's decisions around
pregnancy. In contrast, fetuses do not have legal rights and
cannot be given any, since two beings occupying the same body
would result in a serious clash of rights. In fact, if fetuses
had legal personhood, pregnant women would lose theirs.
The
anti-abortion movement’s fanatical concern for fetuses at the
expense of the rights of pregnant women is dangerous. By far
the best route to healthy outcomes for pregnant women and
their babies is to ensure that women have the resources and
supports they need to carry to term. And when they know in
their hearts that it‘s not the right time to bring a life into
this world, they deserve access to safe and legal abortion
instead of risking their lives on the black market. Let's not
embark down the same road as the U.S., with its vindictive and
punitive anti-abortion restrictions. There’s no need to
re-open the abortion debate in Canada because we can trust
women to make the best decisions for themselves and their
families.