On Saturday November 22nd the editorial in the National Post addressed late term abortions as a result of the Right Now undercover investigation into 4 abortion facilities. I wrote the letter to the editor below addressing comments in the editorial and wish to tease those out a bit in this piece, if I may.

Dear Editor,

The November 22nd Editorial headline reads “National debate needed on abortions” we could not agree more. However, the debate must include facts such as, antiquated Canadian law describes the “child before birth” as “not a human being”. No induced abortion debate can be had without facing the truth that, there is a human being growing inside the womb who is killed by abortion, there is no right to abortion in Canada, induced abortion is not medically indicated for any illness, injury or disease, and most abortions are procured for socio-economic reasons.

Why is killing a child at 24 weeks, any different from killing that same child at 10 weeks? We do not make this discernment if a two-year-old or a ten-year-old is killed, because homicide is homicide. We avoid that term regarding abortion of children in the womb because, we deny their humanity in law and apparently you cannot murder someone who does not exist legally, but it is killing all the same.

Rhetoric disguising the fact that we kill children in the womb for any or no reason up to birth – paid mostly by provincial insurance policies – using “medically viable pregnancy”, as an escape clause, assists no country. Human beings generally grow for 9 months inside the womb, yet their inability to survive where they are not supposed to be, is their death knell.

It certainly is time to look at induced abortion, but not by drawing discriminatory and arbitrary lines, nor indeed continuing to pretend that Canadian women “choose abortion” when a 2024 study of Canadian women showed that 60% were forced or coerced against their will to undergo induced abortion. Let us start from facts not fiction. It is the killing and coercion that are wrong not when they occur.”

….terminating a medically viable pregnancy, is often no harder than buying a pack of cigarettes..

When child becomes human being

  • 223 (1) A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not
    • (a) it has breathed;
    • (b) it has an independent circulation; or
    • (c) the navel string is severed.

 

  • Marginal note: Killing child

(2) A person commits homicide when he causes injury to a child before or during its birth as a result of which the child dies after becoming a human being.

  • R.S., c. C-34, s. 206

Medical viability is described as, “…meaning that the baby can survive outside the womb with medical intervention…”

  • May we simply state that babies usually need 9 months to get ready for birth yet these same little ones are lethally penalized because they cannot survive outside the womb before they are ready!!!!!!! The availability of medical intervention has changed dramatically over the years relying on human technology and ingenuity. Should children in the womb be killed because we are too slow to create technologies to support their lives at earlier stages?
  • It would be like being in a plane and because we are not able to breathe in a high altitude without the intervention of an oxygen mask – our lives have no worth or legal protection.

…Progressives have decided that some topics are too dangerous even to discuss…

  • Those of us in the pro-life movement have always known that a proper debate on induced abortion is something that the so-called “progressives” are incapable of having because they know that their ridiculous arguments can never hold against the facts surrounding induced abortion.

part of the problem is not only that Parliament has failed to legislate on abortion…

  • The problem has not been abortion legislation but the absolute acceptance of the idea that children in the womb, are considered part of the mother and that she has a so-called “right” to decide on “her body”. A totally false premise, backed by scientific fact and research, the child growing in the womb is a unique and separate entity from the mother. It is the legal blindness in Canada’s criminal code which discriminates against the child in favour of the mother. Again if a child is ten minutes old and the mother asks a physician to kill her baby, would she be told “it is your choice”?  Law should never allow one person to decide whether or not another human should live or die. Especially when that human is in a most vulnerable state, in the womb.
  • The abortionist may go through the woman’s body to kill the child, but the mother lives after the procedure, the child does not.

Yet the fact remains that Canada is an outlier in the Western world… [other countries]  by and large outlaw the termination of pregnancies far earlier than 24 weeks… 

  • In every country that has abortion laws, the child in the womb is denied human status, just like here in Canada, even with no law on abortion our rates image other countries with 1 in 5 children dying by induced abortion. We do not need abortion laws we need human life protection laws from fertilization/conception, in countries around the world, yet somehow this legal fiction stands, that the class of human beings in the womb are never provided with legal protection of their lives.

…A serious country should be able to have a national debate and come up with a solution that both respects a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body, and the rights of the person growing inside her…

  • What we should be asking ourselves is should a mother be able to dictate if her child in the womb lives or dies?
  • Why do we deny legal protection for the child in the womb?
  • Does the mother’s attitude change the humanity of her child?
  • Is induced abortion actually medicine when it kills one patient and may harm the other?
  • Should induced abortion be used to attempt to solve socio-economic problems?

…majority of the electorate would be in favour of reasonable limits placed on the practice..

 So what!!!! What are reasonable limits when we are discussing the killing of a human being?

I have only scratched the surface really, but in my mind we cannot have a reasonable discussion on induced abortion while denying the humanity of the child in the womb or the harm that abortion heaps on women. For the last 40 years I have heard from one politician or another that now is not the time to to head down the road of protecting life in the womb, it will not pass. However, these same politicians are prepared to defend ending abortion at 20 weeks a very hollow victory that would be for the pro-life movement in Canada. O yes, it would calm the fears and satisfy the government, the politicians and a”majority of the electorate,” but it would be a disaster for humanity, and the prolife movement. Strangely, you never see the abortion lobby give up one inch, a sad day when the witnesses to the preciousness of life release our society’s foot from the fire. Protect every human beings’ life before birth, that is all we ethically should be debating to accomplish.

Jakki Jeffs
Executive Director
Alliance for Life Ontario