The Noxiously Irate Debate

There, it's flared up again. Public debate gone mad in a frenzy of denunciation. The population well and truly polarized, between support for the provision of legal and safe abortion for women unable or unwilling to carry a pregnancy, and those who shrilly claim such a decision as to abort a fetus is tantamount to murder.

For the most part it's the religious, the fundamentalists among the inflamed protestors, particularly those who adhere to the stance of the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church who are so exercised over the "holocaust of the unborn". We thought we'd gone through it all, and more or less settled the debate. But it was not to be.

The issue, like the fabled Phoenix, just keeps reappearing to enrage the "right-to-lifers" and perplex the "right-to-choice" crowd. The former righteously indignant that anyone would destroy a fertilized egg, the latter, bitterly resentful that anyone could exhibit the nerve to demand legal and ethical, political and moral control over one's body.

Society's traditional censure in controlling the lives and decisions of women cost them dearly. Not only in the lives lost of women who sought any brute means by which they might dislodge the mass of cells assembling in their bodies for which they were unprepared to commit themselves, but those children who saw the light of day on pregnancy completion and who suffered lives of abysmal neglect and abuse, resulting as the dregs of society.

Women now demand the right to choose for themselves the path they will take. To make the painful and for them necessary decision to abort a fetus. Or to carry the fetus to term, as a cherished child to be cared for and loved and supported throughout life's journey. It's the choice. It's knowing that the opportunity, should it be required, is there - to obtain a safe alternative to carrying a pregnancy to completion.

Since the selection of Dr. Henry Morgentaler as an Order of Canada recipient in recognition of his personal sacrifice in ensuring that Canadian women had access to a safe medical procedure to remove an unwanted pregnancy, the outraged howls of anti-abortionists have resounded in the electronic media, on the editorial pages of newspapers. Equally balanced by the defenders of Dr. Morgentaler, who value his efforts on women's behalf and who validate the presentation.

Canada's prime minister was pained personally by this controversial selection. Obviously if he had the opportunity to forestall it, he would have, but it was out of his hands. The office of the Governor General of Canada, the Queen's representative as head of state of this country, in officiating at the ceremony and presenting the Order, had no difficulty with it, reflecting the position of the nominating committee.

Tellingly, even among Roman Catholics, our Canadian politicians, including a succession of prime ministers, have had no taste for challenging the majority of Canadians who insist that women should have the right to choose whether they will carry a fetus to full term and embrace motherhood. Former prime ministers of firm religious conviction, some of them Catholic, have affirmed a woman's right to choose. Despite facing public censure from their church.

And the current premier of Ontario, another of the Catholic faith, summed it up very well: "I know Dr. Morgentaler is seen as a controversial figure, but I believe in a woman's right to make a very difficult decision and if she makes that difficult decision and chooses to have an abortion, I want her to be able to do that in a way that is safe and a way that's publicly funded."

The latest poll undertaken to assess Canadians' general feeling about the issue resulted in the finding that two-thirds of Canadians support or "somewhat support" the recognition and award to Dr. Morgentaler. It's well deserved, to give honour to a medical professional whose experience with the results of botched abortions gave him the resolution to fight for women's basic right to choose.

End of story. Pack up those angry arguments people, and just go away.