Letters

In her article, “Commons sets count-
down for choice” Tribune, Oct. 9) Kerry
McCuaig discounts the recent controversy
surrounding Chantal Daigle’s abortion of
her 20-week old fetus by appealing to the
child’s alleged lack of viability. She writes:
“The earliest a fetus has been known to
survive with medical support is 23 weeks.”

McCuaig’s assertion is simply untrue.
What about Marcus Richardson (born Jan.

1, 1972 at Cincinnati General Hospital):

whose birth date was exactly 20 weeks from
the first day of his mother’s last menstrual
period? Since the Richardson case is rele-
vant to viability argument, and since
McCuaig by missing or ignoring the case
thereby commits the Fallacy of Neglect or
Relevant Evidence in her reasoning, we can
legitimately conclude that she is apparently
uninformed in her favouring of the “cho-
ice” position of abortion.

McCuaig points out, pro-choice activists
“bristle” at the government’s and media’s
interest in fetal viability, especially “when
both sectors largely ignore the state and
needs of children already born.” In the
word of a pro-choice group’s representa-
tive, it’s downright hypocritical.

Granting the premise that the state and
media “largely ignore” the situation of
already born children, for McCuaig to con-
demn the government’s and media’s interest
in protecting the unborn child on this basis,
and then to promote no law on abortion is
to be just as hypocritical.

Since we value every human being
regardless of his/her age, biology depen-
dency, and place of residence, why not
avoid the hypocrisy in both cases and be
concerned over the health and welfare of all
children.

McCuaig further commits some spurious
reasoning when she attempts to defuse the
concerns of disabled persons who are
opposed to any law which would name fetal
abnormality as grounds for abortion. Says
McCuaig, “given the (pro-choice move-
ment’s) opposition to any law, the choice
movement has little difficulty agreeing with
the disabled on this issue.”’ In other words,
having no law against abortion is consistent
with having no law naming fetal abnormal-
ity as grounds for abortion, and so the dis-
abled should not be concerned.

But, the disabled should remain con-
cerned. Because the fact remains that not
having any laws on abortion entails (i.e.,
includes) fetal abnormality as a grougds for
abortion — and that is what the disabled
were concerned about in the first place!

Since we value choice, and since one cho-
ice of a mother to abort a human being
wipes out a whole lifetime of choices which
belong to the human who is aborted, let’s
try to think carefully as well as try to be
informed when we consider the so-called
choice position on abortion.

When I think about abortion, I think of
the socio-economic circumstances of the
women who resort to abortion and I think
of the choices of the human beings who are
destroyed by abortion. I suppose that’s why
I conclude that socio-economic problems
require socio-economic solutions, not the
shedding of innocent blood.

Hendrick van der Breggen,
Calgary

BoE,

- McCuaig answers: The case the writer
cites, although used extensively by the anti-
choice lobby, is medically disputed. The
~ survival figure in my article is taken from
the noted work by Christopher Tietze,

Pro-choice supporters at rally in Vancouv

Induced Abortion: A World Review, 1986,
which states there has been no well-
documented case of survival of any infant
born at less than 24 weeks of gestation and
weighing less than 600 grams.

The writer twists the position of groups
representing people with disabilities. These
organizations support choice on abortion.
They, do not accept the government’s
efforts to find a so-called ‘“‘compromise”
position. In this context they are particu-
larly opposed to any law which would name
fetal abnormalities, along with incest and
rape, for example, as “legitimate” grounds
for abortion.

If a woman, after being presented with a
diagnosis of fetal abnormality, decides on
an abortion, that is her personal decision.
This is far different than the state singling
out (or as has happened in other repressive
regimes, forcing) abortion under such con-
ditions.

The writer would demand the same rights
for the fetus as for children, but nowhere in
law is the fetys recognized as a human being
A person who kills a pregnant woman is not
charged with double murder. In assaults on
pregnant women; which have led to miscar-
riages, the accused have not been charged
with the murder of the “child.” f

The fetus is not entitled to receive or
inherit money, or to be named in any legal
document. Death certificates are not
required for miscarriages. There is no estab-
lished customs, such as funerals, to
acknowledge the demise of a fetus. :

Restrictions on abortions reflect a socie-
ty’s view of women. They say women are
too irresponsible to make informed deci-
sions about their own bodies, or that their
bodies are to be used in the service of the
state. It follows that if women are too 1rres-
ponsible to make such personal and fun-
damental decisions about themselves, they
are too irresponsible to have full access to
legal and economic choices. This in turn
denies them the socio-economic solutions
required to exercise their full right to decide
whether or not to bear children. :

Women will end unwanted pregnancies
whether sanctified by law or not. Unfortu-

er on anniversary of Supreme Court ruling decriminalizing abortion.

nately, and I’ve yet to see any proponent of
enforced pregnancy acknowledge this —
lack of access to safe, medical abortions,
results in dead women. According to the
World Health Organization, 250,000 women
die each year from self-induced or illegal
abortions. Prior to the legalization of
abortion in Canada, illegal abortion was the
number one cause of deateh of women
during their childbearing years.

The number of abortion-related deaths
per 100,000 was 18.6 in 1970, it had dropped

. to .5 deaths in 1980. Conversely, new res-

trictions on abortion dramatically increase
the numbers of deaths. Romania has seen
its deaths due to illegal abortions increase
sevenfold since it banned the procedure in
1966.

The writer says he values choice, does he
recognize dead women have no choices.

Let's put lid on profits

The apparently unconscious and
clearly unabashed idiocy of big busi-
ness thinking becomes daily more
apparent.

Their fundamental, governing prin-
ciple of always and at every step max-
imizing profit leads, theoretically and
unless checked inevitably in practice,
to total profit equalling total product.
All is profiteering. This is nonsense.

Where profit equals product, where
is the consumer? Where is the pro-
ducer? Who is the producer?

As the Bible puts its (rather well, I
think) “What does it profit a man if he
gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul” i.e. his own existence?

But is not this what we are today all
engaged more and more in doing?
Turning more and more of the
resources of the earth into increasing

‘destructive capacity (for profit); into
self-poisoning (for profit); into pollu-
tion (for profit); into de-forestation
(for profit); into soil erosion (for
profit); into demolition of affordable
homes (for profit)?

Yet all this is the agenda of big
business — the god-head and hero of
our society.

May we not give thought to the
possibility that putting a lid on profit

might give consuming power a break,

and life a chance, both socially and
ecologically speaking?

Beatrice Ferneyhough,

Vancouver

Cut density
on Expo land

The lack of vision by the Mayor,
and the over-development of the
downtown core of our city over the
next five years, will heavily impact on
low-income people of the Downtown
Eastside.

The NPA seem to have no concern
over this second wave of Expo land
evictions. There is a 0.2 per cent
vacancy rate at this time, and nowhere
but the street and alleys to go.

The Concord Pacific Expo land
project should be downsized by one-
third.

The Hulchanski report on housing
should have been adopted by council
but was instead put off for six months.

Don Larson,
Vancouver °

Pacific Tribune, November 6, 1989 « 5