The Outrage Is When You Know

When they refuse to debate is when you know they know

There's something very special about pro-abortion lobbyists who insist there is no debate regarding abortion.

That shouldn't be mistaken for special in a good way. It's the other kind of special.

It takes a very "special" kind of person to deny to existence of something that, whether they like or not -- and it's clear that they don't -- is happening right before their very eyes.

If denying the existence of that debate isn't one thing, insisting that it can't even be allowed to happen -- despite the fact that it is -- is another.

Naturally, the pro-abortion lobby will over all kinds of excuses about why they can't be bothered to debate their pet issue with people who, god forbid, dare to disagree with them.

They insist it's because the anti-abortion lobby can't argue rationally. And to their discredit, many members of the anti-abortion don't argue rationally.

But if that were the case, one would have to think that the pro-abortion lobby would consider itself obligated when confronted with a rational argument.

Think again.

A recent episode invovling (who else), the Unrepentant Old Hippie, JJ, casts light on the real reason they won't engage in a rational debate: it would mean that they would have to defend their ideas honestly.

It started simply enough: with a question over whether or not medically unnecessary late-term abortions should be banned, something that was dismissed as unnecessary. Dr Henry Morgentaler himself had refused to perform late-term abortions that were medically unnecessary because he judged them to be unethical. Suggestions that a doctor's right to refuse to perform an abortion they deemed to be unethical be legally protected was similarily rejected -- if not ignored entirely.

But then there was the matter of JJ's own double-speak on the issue.

When known anti-Semite Robert McClelland suggested abortion rights be enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, JJ gushed over the idea.

When confronted on the subject, however, JJ took a rather characteristic way out. she lied:

"I’ve never “advocated” for any such thing - I once responded positively to an idea tabled by another blogger in the comments here, which is hardly “advocacy”. I’ve never even done a post about it. That’s advocacy? Uh, no."

But then again, one only has to take a close second look at the comment itself:

"Robert - Right on! That’s one debate I hope we can have very soon, with the outcome of having reproductive rights protected in a way that’s untouchable."

JJ responded affmirmatively to the idea of entrenching "women's reproductive rights" -- a euphemism for abortion rights -- "protected in a way that's untouchable".

Either JJ is simply lying about the position she's taken or she doesn't understand how the Charter of Rights and Freedoms actually works. If a woman's right to an abortion were protected in the Charter, a doctor's right to decline would have to be protected there as well.

One has to remember that this is coming from an individual who opposes protecting a doctor's right to choose to refuse to perform an abortion they deem to be unethical. That protection is unnecessary, they insist, because "no one is forcing doctors to perform abortions".

Yet if JJ and Robert McClelland were successful in their bid to entrench abortion rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, doctors could not refuse without risk of legal reprisal. If they were successful to this end -- a proposal that JJ insists that she doesn't advocate, and yet responded to the same proposition with a resounding "right on" -- a woman denied a medically unnecessary late-term abortion could sue in a civil court, or complain to a human rights commission.

So what was JJ's response to being confronted with the calculated inconsistency in her own stances? Recriminate:

"You really are a textbook case of bad-faith debate. If you ever want to be taken seriously as a blogger, you need to cut that out. There’s lots to debate without making shit up.

Now fuck off, I’ve had enough of your bullshit."

But JJ fails to explain: what, precisely, was made up?

She wrote the words. Robert McClelland proposed an idea that would make doctors who refused to perform abortions they considered unethical -- including Dr Henry Morgentaler himself -- vulnerable to legal reprisal.

And she responded with "right on!"

A person could quote her until the cows come home. So why can't she just be honest about it?

There is a reason. It's because the most extreme elements of the pro-abortion lobby has conducted their side of the debate under protracted conditions of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice. Not to mention precisely the bad-faith arguments that they love to accuse others of making.

For example, consider this, a blogpost wherein JJ concludes that if one single medical professional -- in this case, a nurse -- abuses protection offered by freedom-of-conscience legislation, then such legislation is a bad thing because it was abused.

Yet if one were to accept the same line of argument, then all it would take to prove that a ban on medically unnecessary late-term abortions is necessary is one single medically unnecessary late-term abortion. All it would take to dispel the argument that abortion doctors adhere to Henry Morgentaler's admirable ethical standard is one single doctor who doesn't.

Of course they'll never be honest about this. And if ever confronted with the inconsistencies, dishonesties and hypocrisies in their own arguments, they'll never take responsibility for them. Instead, they'll take the intellectual coward's way out.

Which comes back to the real reason why people like JJ don't want any kind of an abortion debate to happen -- because if it did, they would have to face the reality that it may not end favourably for them, because some of their arguments are not defensible.

That's why they won't debate. Hell, they won't even be honest about why they won't debate.

And Now, Finally, Some Answers

Some Nexus readers may recall a pair of "bring it" challenges issued by Unrepentant Old Hippie JJ.

Readers may also remember that, despite at least on one occasion agreeing to answer the questions posed to her as a response to her "bring it" challenge, JJ has yet to respond.

That is, at least, until now.

Responding to one of the questions asked -- the question over whether or not doctors in Canada should have their right to perform an abortion they judge to be unethical protected -- JJ has finally seen fit to answer:

"And I've answered it on multiple occasions, Patrick, but once more for the road: doctors are not *forced* to do any procedure they don't want to. In one of several previous answers (At what point here did JJ forget that she refused to answer the question on one occasion, and just plain didn't on another? -ed) to this same question from you, I cited the example of my own pro-life GP, who rather than specialize in gynecology (because it would involve doing abortions) chose to specialize in pediatrics. That's the path most doctors would choose.

That may not be the answer you want, but it's not going to change no matter how many times you ask me the same question."

This would seem like a satisfactory argument.

Except that, as it turns out, JJ herself isn't really in favour of things staying this way.

Take, for example, the following comment from known anti-semite Robert McClelland over at JJ's own blog:

"We should have the debate but it shouldn’t be the debate the fetus fetishists want. The debate we should be having is whether or not to enshrine women’s reproductive rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

To be fair, this wasn't really JJ's idea. But then again:

"Robert - Right on! That’s one debate I hope we can have very soon, with the outcome of having reproductive rights protected in a way that’s untouchable."

The problem with this, of course, is that entrenching abortion "rights" in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would actually enable women to litigate against doctors who refuse to perform abortions.

As the pro-abortion lobby will insist at length, Dr Henry Morgentaler himself had admirable ethical reservations about late-term abortions, and refused to perform them.

Yet if Robert McClelland had his way, women would have an unquestionable right to abortions -- likely under any circumstances. Thus, doctors such as Henry Morgentaler could actually face legal action in civil court or before a human rights commission.

In other words, JJ is opposed to legislation protecting a doctor's right to choose to refuse to perform an abortion they deem to be unethical. Even as she is doing this, she's advocating for a course of action that would erase a physician's right to choose. If this had been done prior to Dr Morgentaler's retirement, Morgentaler himself would almost certainly be subjected to legal action for refusing to perform an unethical late-term abortion.

If she and her pro-abortion cohorts were successful to this end, not only would legislative protection for doctors become necessary, but it would also be unattainable. The only way for the government to protect doctors the pro-abortion lobby would be trying to punish for their sense of ethics would be to either entrench that protection in the Charter, or invoke the notwithstanding clause.

Invoking the notwithstanding clause on any issue even remotely related to abortion is almost certainly something the pro-abortion lobby would never tolerate.

It's hard to overlook the obvious overtones of a pro-abortion hidden agenda here. The pro-abortion lobby would insist that their advocacy is merely in favour of choice. Yet while they insist that protection for a doctor's right to choose is unnecessary, they on the other hand call for a course of action that would permanently and "untouchably" deny doctors their right to choose.

It's just another example of the two-faced nature of the pro-abortion lobby: pretending to be moderate in public, then plotting their extreme agenda when they think no one's looking.

The CPSO Has Your "Pro-Choice" Right Here!

College of Physicians and Surgians of Ontario moves to deny doctors choice

Frequent readers of the Nexus will almost certainly recall a recent response to a challenge by a pro-abortion blogger in which the philosophical quandry of the so-called "pro-choice" lobby opposing legislation that would protect the rights of doctors to refuse to perform abortions for moral, religious or ethical reasons was brought to her attention.

According to a column published in today's National Post, it turns out the issue is worse than previously thought.

The CPSO has proposed new guidelines that could result in doctors who refuse to perform abortions, refer women for abortions, perscribe the morning after pill, or perform any number of medical procedures they find objectionable for any reason being stripped of their credentials.

The CPSO frames these proposals against a doctor's responsibility to their patients, postulating that a "physician's responsibility is to place the needs of the patient first, [so] there will be times when it may be necessary for physicians to set aside their personal beliefs in order to ensure that patients or potential patients are provided with the medical services they require."

As Gunter notes, one may have questions about at one point an abortion is or isn't a "necessary" service.

Perhaps one of the most recent Order of Canada recipients, Dr Henry Morgentaler, can provide us with a clue.

"We don't abort babies, we want to abort fetuses before they become babies," Morgentaler told CTV in 2004. "Around 24 weeks I have ethical problems doing that."

Morgentaler used his ethical concerns about late-term abortions as a reason to refuse to perform late-term abortions. "What we do at our clinics is if we have a problem like that we usually council the woman to continue the pregnancy and put it up for adoption if she is unable to care for it," Morgentaler noted.

Morgentaler's clinics were only performing late-term abortions in cases where the woman's life was imperiled by her pregnancy, or when a child would be born facing serious health concerns.

That most physicians refuse to perform abortion was cited by Morgentaler as a reason why no rules regulating late-term abortions are necessary. The argument in 2004 was, essentially, that doctors were regulating themselves.

Now, the CPSO is moving to refuse doctors in Ontario the right to refuse to perform an abortion or refer for an abortion.

It was bad enough when the pro-abortion lobby was merely opposing legislation like Bill C-537. Now, one can fully expect that the pro-abortion lobby will inevitably flock to shower praise on the CPSO for passing guidelines that will essentially grant women in Ontario the right to demand abortions (or, at the very least, referrals for abortion) from doctors who would otherwise be unwilling to perform them.

Even while they parrot Dr Morgentaler's insistence that regulation of late-term abortion is unncessary because doctors can refuse to perform them, they'll happily support the CPSO in making that very costly, indeed.

Unfortunately, it isn't at all like the pro-abortion lobby to gut their own logic in support of their cause.

But when the pro-abortion lobby's support of the CPSO emerges -- and it inevitably will -- Canadians will once again have their confirmation that, for the so-called "pro-choice" lobby, the issue isn't about choice at all.

It's about abortion. So much so that they believe that doctors should be denied the right to choose as punishment for the "egregious crime" of opposing abortion for ethical, moral or religious reasons.

One has to wonder, however: how will the "pro-choice" Dr Morgentaler respond if the CPSO makes it impossible for his clinics to refuse to perform abortions it would otherwise refuse to perform for ethical reasons?

Ultimately, Morgentaler himself has a great deal to lose if the CPSO gets its way.

Well, Let's Give the Crazy Lady What She Wants

JJ says "bring it". Time to do precisely that

Sometimes, the only thing more amusing than dimwits who lie to try to cover up their mistakes are ideologues who can't even comprehend the very idea of possibly being wrong in the first place.

Such would be the case with JJ, the crazed proprietor of Unrepentant Old Hippie, who recently offered up this amusing little gem:

"In marathoning it's called "hitting the wall". I don't know if there's a blogging equivalent, but after 10 days of frenzied blogging in the wake of Dr. M's OC appointment and the barrage of batshit bullshit that followed, I was suddenly exhausted. I couldn't stand to read or even think about one more word of the steaming loads of bullshit being dumped by the "busload" on blogs and in the media over this topic and the tangential abortion issue. I was tired, man.

Normally bullshit is great incentive to blog -- it shouldn't be ignored because there's a chance that some unsuspecting person out there might believe it. Bullshit should be shot down whenever and wherever it's found and its sanctimonious, stupid and self-righteous propagators ridiculed with gusto. But these people are first and foremost propaganda-bots who never budge from their script, even in the face of evidence that contradicts them. In advertising we used to call it "Wearing down their resistance with repetition". The same kind of psychology is at work with anti-abortion propagandists -- knowing full well that the numbers aren't on their side, their only hope is to wear down resistance with an endless loop of lies. To literally exhaust people into seeing things their way."

After taking a short time-out to trot out the latest "anti-choice outrage" she disagrees with, JJ ends her post with an invitation to any and all who would dare disagree with her. "Bring it!" she insists.

Well, OK. Only if we really have to.

Because ironically, this could very much be treated as one of those instances in which a person, searching for that perfect epithet to hurl at their opponents, describes themselves most acurately.

In this case, it revolves around JJ's insistence that those who disagree with her are "first and foremost propaganda-bots who never budge from their script, even in the face of evidence that contradicts them."

Considering that refusing to acknowledge evidence that contradicts her is a privilege JJ has indulged herself in at length, it's impossible to take her seriously on this particular point.

But despite all the extremist craziness that has transpired before -- such as defending an assault on a 69-year-old man for expressing anti-abortion views -- JJ deserves an opportunity to prove herself. The following is an email sent to JJ in response to her little diatribe today:

"JJ,

I read with some interest your recent blog post "On Bullshit and Breaks", and really couldn't help but agree that, yes, the whole Morgentaler controversy SHOULD be given a rest. After all, it isn't as if this is the nobel prize we're talking about here.

But I couldn't help but read, with some amusement, your comments regarding your anti-abortion opponents. Most notably:

"Bullshit should be shot down whenever and wherever it's found and its sanctimonious, stupid and self-righteous propagators ridiculed with gusto. But these people are first and foremost propaganda-bots who never budge from their script, even in the face of evidence that contradicts them. In advertising we used to call it "Wearing down their resistance with repetition". The same kind of psychology is at work with anti-abortion propagandists -- knowing full well that the numbers aren't on their side, their only hope is to wear down resistance with an endless loop of lies. To literally exhaust people into seeing things their way."

I found this statement to be rather ironic and amusing considering that, if anything, it describes yourself and your allies in the pro-abortion lobby as well as anyone else.

In particular, your characterization of them as "propaganda-bots who never budge from their script, even in the face of evidence that contradicts them".

In this vein, I'd like to "bring it" by positing the following facts, to see if we can get you, yourself, to budge from that precious script of yours:

1. You, like virtually all pro-abortion activists opposed to bill C-484, insist that it's nothing more than a back-door attempt to criminalize abortion. Yet fetal homicide acts are in effect in numerous states in the United States. Yet in none of those states has abortion been declared illegal.

2. You, like virtually all pro-abortion activists, oppose any attempt to legislate when an abortion can or cannot be sought on demand (without relevant health-related concerns), often insisting that such legislation would be nothing more than a back-door attempt to criminalize abortion. Yet France, Germany, Norway and Sweden (amongst other countries) have legislated a 20-week limit after which a woman must have medical concerns in order to obtain an abortion. Abortion has yet to be criminalized in any of these countries.

3. You, like virtually all pro-abortion activists, insist that legislation such as that described in point number two is unnecessary because no doctor would perform a late-term abortion without sufficient medical reason due to the procedure being judged to be unethical. Yet you oppose legislation that would legally protect the right of such doctors to refuse to perform that procedure for ethical, moral or religious reasons.

4. You, like virtually all pro-abortion activists continue to insist that you are not, in fact, pro-abortion, but rather pro-choice. Yet you, like virtually all pro-abortion activists, oppose the aforementioned legislation that would protect freedom of choice for doctors who hold opinions regarding abortion that differ from your own.

These are dilemmas that have never been addressed adequately by any member of the pro-abortion lobby, least of all yourself.

In fact you, like virtually all members of the pro-abortion lobby, have stuck very adamantly to the positions outlined here despite the fact they have never been adequately defended. Not much unlike "propaganda-bots who never budge from their script, even in the face of evidence that contradicts them".

Considering the position you've taken today, I'm hoping you'll finally find it in yourself to address these various dilemmas.

You may feel free to do so in a response email (but should understand before doing so that I intend to post such a response to a subsequent post on my own blog in order to outline your response), in a post on your own blog, or even in the comments section of The Nexus.

You've asked those who disagree with you to "bring it". I've done precisely that. Hopefully, you'll put your money where your mouth is.

Regards,
-Patrick Ross"

Well, she did say to "bring it".

Now we'll have to wait and see if she's actually up to her own challenge on this one. Stay tuned.

Morgentaler Debate Continues Its Downward Spiral

Very little rational thought at the core of Order of Canada conflaguration

Ever since it was announced that Dr Henry Morgentaler would be named to the Order of Canada, the abortion debate in Canada has taken a rather distinct turn for the stupid.

Various newspaper editorials condemned the appointment as "divisive".

Various bloggers defend the appointment based on the previous appointment of Conrad Black (who, just for the record, should be stripped of the Order of Canada, just as it was stripped from Alan Eagleson).

Of course, some of the most insipid comments have been made by ideologues such as Mississauga Ontario's Ric East who insisted that men have no right to voice their opinions about abortion, worth noting here as an example:

"It was interesting to note that most of those letter-writers opposing the idea of Dr. Henry Morgentaler receiving an Order of Canada are males. Their comments have no relevance as they do not have the bodies to produce children and therefore they have no say in this issue."

In other words, if you have a penis, you have no right to hold an opinion on the issue, because it couldn't possibly affect you.

Mr East, however, may want to compare notes with Port Coquitlam BC's A.D. Wilson who can speak otherwise from personal experience:

"I'm a dad that signed a teenage abortion application during the heat of this debate. And quite frankly, that experience wasn't a milestone in my life. I'm far from a Christian, absorbed in the daily routine of keeping kith and kin whole and being a well-meaning and diligent provider. Notwithstanding, losing a grandchild was hurtful to me. I don't wish the decision on anyone. Life is precious and expedient choices hurt even the most prudent. Barbara Kay certainly has opened a wound and the debate to me is far from closed. I'm certainly not pro-choice but some decisions can really cripple."

But at the end of the day, the entire matter is all pure silliness.

The Order of Canada may mean a lot when awarded under the right circumstances, but in most cases, when awarded, it's just another shiny bauble. Charles Aznavour -- a name likely alien to the vast majority of Canadians -- will recieve the Order of Canada next week.

And while various Canadians will certainly try to hold up Morgentaler's Order of Canada as evidence of Canada-wide support for their particular agenda vis a vis abortion, and other Canadians will deride it as a travesty, in the grand scheme of things, it actually means very little.

Time for the silliness to end.

Dumbing Down the Abortion "Debate"

Jonathon Kay takes us inside the pro-abortion camp

In an op/ed article published on the National Post's Full Comment website, Jonathon Kay takes his readers on a journey to the University of Toronto's "Symposium to Mark the 20th Anniversary of R vs Morgentaler".

It isn't always a pretty picture.

First off, one may have expected that such a symposium would mark a valuable opportunity for pro-abortion (an infinitely more accurate description than "pro-choice") activists to refine their arguments for the future.

Yet Kay encountered a very different scene, one that he notes is very reminiscent of what passes for "debate" regarding abortion across the spectra of interested parties:

"Abortion is the one subject on which otherwise tolerant, open-minded people cannot agree to disagree. If you truly believe that life begins at conception, then what happens in Canada’s abortion clinics and wards approximately 100,000 times every year is, quite literally, a species of genocide. If you take the opposite view — that a fetus is a component of its female host without legal rights or human identity — then your opponents will strike you as nothing but ignorant misogynists. That is why we have precious little “debate” on the subject of abortion. Instead, we have sloganeering by two distinct and mutually hostile ideological tribes."

To this end, Kay is absolutely correct. The rhetorically-charged perceptions borne by the most militant of those on either margin may seem outragenously crazed by the measure of a rational person, but one has to keep in mind that these are not rational people.

"On Friday, Canada’s pro-choice movement convened what could best be described as a convention of tribal elders — middle-aged and elderly champions of the movement, including Henry Morgentaler, whose victory in the Supreme Court of Canada served to dismantle the entire criminal-law regime surrounding abortion 20 years ago today.

The University of Toronto Law School’s “Symposium to Mark the 20th Anniversary of R. v. Morgentaler” was an odd event. On one hand, it was organized by, and sponsored by, the law school’s own faculty — and so took on the superficial trappings of a normal academic symposium. But since not one of the 15 abortion doctors, scholars, writers and politicians who spoke took a pro-life stand, or even dealt in any serious way with pro-life arguments, the event was actually more of a pro-choice pep rally. On the few occasions when the existence of a pro-life camp was even acknowledged, it was invariably dismissed as a cadre of retrograde zealots plotting to undermine the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

For these true believers, opposition to abortion is a mental defect, not a bona fide policy position. Osgoode Hall Law School professor Shelley Gavigan, the most militant and stereotypically feminist of the conference panelists, declared categorically that “The unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice — and that voice is hers.” The fact that some of her students didn’t see things her way only meant that “I have some work to do on the pedagogical front.”"

Or, conversely, that fact could be seen as proof that there are, as much as Gavigan would surely prefer otherwise, people afoot who can recognize abortion as a real issue that affects real people.

It could just so happen to be proof that Gavigan's premise is inherently flawed. If, as she asserts, pregnant mothers and unborn children do indeed speak with one voice, that would seem to be an implicit admission that abortion is an issue that deals with not merely one body -- but two: the mother and her child. The two may indeed speak with one voice. But by the same token, the unborn child doesn't really have a voice yet -- this is one of the handicaps of being unborn.

Furthermore, who is Gavigan to suggest that, in a matter pertaining to the life and death of the child, that the unborn child shouldn't have a say in the matter?

Unfortuantely, as morally satisfying as the certain inability of Gavigan and those who think like her to answer this question would be, it does make a real abortion debate unbearably complex.

Then again, what could be more unbearably complex than moral ruminations over the end of -- what at least would be -- a human life?

Perhaps there are good reasons why pro-abortion activists seem so unprepared to answer these questions.

"CBC.ca writer Heather Mallick likewise expressed approval of student associations that cut off funding to pro-life groups — because “the rights of Canadian women “are not up for debate.” She also theorized that pro-life stirrings in the mainstream media were mostly the result of over-the-hill male editors seeking to control through repression the lithesome bodies that, in their decrepitude, they could no longer enjoy in the bedroom. And Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett put up a slide entitled “Role of an elected official,” which declared that politicians have “no right” to oppose abortion — because “That is the responsibility of women.”"

Once again, these pro-abortion zealots simply drag up a host of philisophical quandries.

If the rights of Canadian women are not up for debate, why are the rights of the unborn child? Does Mallick really want to suggest that Human Rights is a zero-sum game, in which unborn children can only make gains at the expense of their expecting (or even unintending) mothers?

And who is Carolyn Bennet to suggest that politicians have no right to oppose abortion? Is the right to an opinion on the matter dependent upon support of abortion?

There are significant portions of the Canadian population who oppose abortion as well. Are they unentitled to their opinion? Are they unentitled to support political candidates who support their views?

Isn't Canada a Democracy?

These are the wrong questions for the pro-abortion movement to get stuck trying to answer. Yet they seem to be the questions they're content to provoke.

Fortuantely for them, however, they do have the wisdom to (largely) make such arguments in private, far away from the prying ears of anti-abortion activists (a label infinitely more accurate than "pro-life"), where such questions won't be asked of them.

"If anyone in the audience disagreed with any of this, you wouldn’t have known it. When the time came for questions, there were a few fawning queries, but no sparks. The intimidating-looking plainclothes security fellow who’s apparently been hired to hustle overeager pro-lifers out of the room never had to stir from his seat.

And yet, beneath the veneer of tribal sisterly celebration, I did manage to detect a strain of underlying tension. It came out on those few occasions when one of the speakers made oblique allusion to that taboo question in the pro-choice camp: How late is too late?

This should be a question of special interest to anyone who’s managed to escape the tribal polarization of the abortion debate. Squeezed between the two tribes are a few of us (including me) who think a woman should have a broad right to abort her fetus when it is an insentient bundle of cells, but are appalled by the fact that Canada — alone among industrialized nations — permits “socially motivated” abortion in the second and even third trimesters. Yet in a full day of presentations purporting to comprehensively evaluate the state of abortion in this country, no one at this symposium took on this one disturbing, and truly unique, feature of our country’s legal landscape."

This is probably for good reason: the current lack of limits on when a fetus may be aborted is a debate topic on which, frankly, the pro-abortion lobby doesn't stand a rat's ass of a chance.

"Even in the Q&A, the issue came up only twice — and then, only obliquely. The first came when an audience member bemoaned the fact that most doctors in Western nations wouldn’t perform abortions after 24 weeks — and asked, with apparently genuine curiosity, why this was so. The panelist who answered, National Abortion Federation director Dawn Fowler, refused to supply a reason, merely demurring that “It will be interesting to have the physicians appearing later today [as speakers] comment on that.” (None did.) A few hours later, a male student rose during the Q&A to broach the issue indirectly with legendary Canadian abortion doctor Garson Romalis. The student asked whether late-term unborn children should be supplied pain-killers as part of the abortion procedure. Romalis (who, by way of background, has survived two murder attempts by pro-life fanatics) dismissed any evidence that aborted fetuses feel pain, and with it the entire issue, in a single sentence. And that was it."

On the particular question of whether or not aborted fetuses feel pain -- or at what stage they would -- Romalis seems to have recieved a free pass. The factual science on the matter is incredibly difficult to tell apart from the rhetoric on the matter. (Although there are some prime examples of some remarkably specious claims afoot.)

But the most interesting thing about late-term abortions is that, in Canada, they may not be such a serious concern (perhaps even due to possible ethical concerns on behalf of those doctors who would be performing such abortions).

"The interesting thing is that several of the symposium speakers — most notably, University of Toronto Law School professor Joanna Erdman — vigorously assured the audience that very few abortions take place in Canada “for social reasons” beyond 20 weeks, and none beyond 24 weeks.

No doubt, the data show this to be true. But why was this fact so important as to deserve emphasis? Similarly, why did Gavigan take such pains to dismiss anecdotes of women having abortions for capricious reasons (e.g., looking good in a bikini on an upcoming vacation) as “preposterous misogynistic fables.” If it is really true that “the unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice,” then presumably they have the right to assume a voice that is selfish and vain. If the “dominant ideology of the unborn child” is nothing but a misogynistic construct invented by patriarchal moralists, why does it matter if that so-called unborn child weighs one pound — or five? Why strike such defensive postures against a issue that no one in the room would even discuss?"

Well, Gavigan may have dismissed such anecdotes because they are just that -- anecdotes. Perhaps when such women can be convinced to make such comments on the public record they would be considered legitimate fodder for public debate. In the meantime, they're simply stories, which may or (more importantly) may not be true.

Who would know?

Perhaps the seeming percieved necessity to address such matters is indicative that these may be more than merely stories. Then again, perhaps the American fascination with conspiracy theories suggests that maybe the CIA really did order the trigger pulled on John F Kennedy.

Anyone rational care to take that one on?

Didn't think so.

"The answer to this last question, I think, is that these women are not as doctrinaire as they pretend to be. Within their own minds, they do wrestle with these important moral questions. But when in public, none of them feel comfortable exploring them. Locked in what they feel to be a tribal culture war against pro-lifers, they allow themselves no nuance. That is why on Friday, by unspoken agreement, they eschewed the opportunity for real intellectual give and take on the one fundamental aspect of the abortion issue that has needed to be addressed since January 28, 1988, and instead focused on self-congratulation, paranoia and sisterly bonding. It is no exaggeration to say that the middle-aged women behind the podium at this conference are the reason we have no abortion law: Any stirring of legislative action arouses among them such tribal war fury as to send politicians scurrying.

As for the next generation, I am more hopeful.

The Gavigan-Mallick-Bennett generation came by their militancy honestly: by witnessing the truly Byzantine and unconscionably arbitrary barriers to early-term abortion faced by Canadian women in the pre-Morgentaler era. They also bore witness to the hideous medical carnage caused by self-induced and back-alley abortions (a phenomenon Romalis described in detail in what was easily the most powerful presentation of Friday’s symposium). For these pro-choice advocates, there will never be compromise. Behind every law, they will see the hand of the old patriarchy.

But the same isn’t true for today’s 20- and 30-something Canadian women, who have grown up in a Canada where accessible, state-funded abortion is generally taken for granted. Perhaps this new generation will be the one to strike the sort of proper moral balance reflected in the legislation of most European countries. In 10 years, I like to think, I’ll be attending a “Symposium to Mark the 30th Anniversary of R. v. Morgentaler” where the participants will be trading not only slogans, but morally serious ideas as well."

Perhaps the Gavigan-Mallick-Bennet generation did comeby their militancy honestly. However, they've also passed that militancy along to the next generation, of whom Kay says he is more hopeful.

Yet, that same generation has been indoctrinated into the militant pro-abortion dogma since a much younger age. As is the case with all such things, the effects would be much harder to overcome, and even if they were, to what end?

Does Kay (or anyone else, for that matter) honestly believe that the abortion debate will ever be subject to compromise? Or even that it should?

Frankly, the only compromise what will ever bear productive fruit in regards to the abortion debate will be a compromise regarding the terms of debate. Other than that, the specific questions at hand in the abortion debate -- the rights of women, the rights of unborn children, term limits on abortion, post-abortion issues, and an infinite myriad of others -- are all simply too complex to ever simply "meet in the middle".

Abortion is a hopelessly complex issue. The solutions will either be hopelessly complex, or non-existent. There is simply too little middle ground, and too little will to debate to fill it.