Week 96.
It was only a matter of time. Elder Advice and COVID finally stopped avoiding each other this week. Our relationship is now “toxic” - the kind that leaves one of us irritated and exhausted. Indeed, COVID has the upper hand and is being abusive emotionally and physically. As with all toxic relationships, I need to get out of this one.
Elder Advice thought long and hard this week about wading into Roe v Wade. The subject is a fraught one.
It should first be said that everyone needs to take a Valium. The unfolding crisis over abortion rights in the United States is of no real relevance to Canadians. A large part of the current upheaval south of the 49th parallel results from the knowledge that this is but the first in what promises to be a wholesale, multi-decade shredding of US Supreme Court precedent by a Court dominated by right wing ideologues. That is not going to happen here. Neither the Supreme Court of Canada nor the provincial or federal governments has any substantive interest in reviving the abortion debate in particular, and decades of public opinion has shown consistently that those views reflect the views of the vast majority of Canadians.
A favourite Canadian client of mine told me he once asked his mother what was her view on abortion. “I don’t know, ask your sister” she said. “But I don’t have a sister” he replied. “Exactly.”
Those of Elder Advice’s vintage will recall the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark decision in 1988 in R. v. Morgentaler. The Court ruled that Section 251 of the Criminal Code - which made it a criminal offense to have an abortion without the approval of a committee of doctors - violated Section 7 of the Charter which guarantees the right of life, liberty and the security of the person. The majority of the Court did not go so far as to say that there was a Charter right to an abortion; it simply struck down the criminal sanction against it. As the Chief Justice, writing for the majority of the Court, put it: "Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a fetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman's body and thus a violation of security of the person."
I remember with great clarity how crestfallen my father was at being rejected for the jury in the first criminal trial of Dr. Morgentaler. Defense counsel objected to him on the basis that a journalist must have a preconceived notion about conception. In fact he didn’t. His was precisely the kind of willing mind which would have decided solely on the evidence. The experience led to some heated discussions with me about the usefulness of lawyers, including whether Dick the Butcher had the right idea.
What is notable about the Canadian experience post-Morgentaler is that the overall rate of abortions in Canada has declined steadily and significantly. Whether that is, most recently, the result of the 2017 approval by Health Canada of the medical abortion pill Mifegymiso - used safely and effectively for years in Europe and elsewhere and available under most provinces’ health plans - Elder Advice does not know.
What he does know is that there is room for improvement in access to reproductive health and family planning services in many parts of the country, and that improvement is long overdue.
What he also knows is that what we have witnessed over the past week from Ottawa and the media is nothing more than Liberal spin doctoring - raising this wedge issue yet again in a transparent attempt to stoke pubic fear over the smattering of anti-abortionists in the Conservative party.
Recognizing the always vanishingly small possibility that he could be wrong, Elder Advice has concerns about several things when it comes to this emotionally charged subject.
First, Elder Advice has always been reluctant to accept the life begins at conception position - that before he has even lit up his post-coital cigarette, there is a third person in the room. On the other hand, he has long subscribed to the view that the loss of a viable fetus is another matter and needs to be: (i) viewed as an issue of maternal health care; and (ii) made as rare as possible through ready access to contraception and planned parenthood services.
Second, where serious concerns over maternal physical and mental health are in issue, including in cases of rape or incest, Elder Advice simply cannot imagine a circumstance where those concerns should not take precedence.
Third, the grim reality facing any jurisdiction that criminalizes abortion is that the only certain result will be a decline in legal abortions. The practice will simply go back underground where it existed for centuries, to the serious detriment of women and the benefit of no one.
Fourth, a disturbing number of those who decline to accept that women should have personal autonomy over their own bodies are men. Elder Advice has long wrestled with the thought that perhaps this is one issue in which men may have an opinion, but no say in the outcome. At least until those men have irrevocably signed on to adopt those born at their insistence. If more general reciprocity is required, I have no doubt that women would be prepared to give up all their interest in matters pertaining to the prostate gland - an interest which, admittedly, none of them has ever shown.
Finally, over the years, this issue has taken up far too much oxygen. It distracts us from problems which can and need to be solved. Problems that affect all of us and have far greater impact on our lives.
So Elder Advice wishes our American neighbours well in dealing with it, but is not optimistic that they will be able to.
Anyway, Elder Advice has long promoted a real solution to this issue - one his mother thought of in the 1960s. If we had invested all the resources expended in this debate in the development of a reliable, reversible vasectomy procedure, we would have had one by now. And all that would remain is to require all boys who reach puberty to have a mandatory snip. Once they pass the age of majority, are in a relationship of some durability and have successfully passed a parenting course, the procedure would be reversed.
Now that would make a vas deferens.
Elder Advice
It seems to me that the polarization of the US people is causing a downward spiral of that country. Abortion is just 1 indicator.
Excellent, as usual!