The Abortion Issue

The latest political incursion into what ought to be a private matter comes from Lib leader Justin Trudeau. Young Trudeau is reported to have said he will not accept any candidates who will vote against the right for any woman to abort a pregnancy. As usual, young Trudeau ventures into territory more experienced politicians tend to avoid.

I'm not a politician and am not looking for anyone's approval, so let's discuss abortion.

To put things in perspective, the debate over when life begins in the process of gestation is ridiculous. Life does not begin. It is simply passed on from parents to children via sperm and egg cell as has been the procedure right from its initiation. 

If life began on this planet, then it was initiated hundreds of millions of years ago. If it arrived here on a meteor or a comet, that time span could go into a billion years or more. But none of this stops the pro and con-abortion pressure groups from wringing their hands over it endlessly.

Someone once described pressure groups as a 20th-Century phenomenon that probably reflects too much spare time available for the first time in history to people unequipped to handle it productively. It is now the 21st Century and nothing much has changed. That description is still accurate.

The anti-abortion lobby in particular, has gone so far as to gun down doctors and other activists who describe their stance as “pro-choice”. That’s as in pro-choice for the mother, no choice for the fetus.

Whether or not this wrangling serves the development of our social consciousness in a positive way is difficult to say. However, forcing a woman to go through with a pregnancy who would otherwise terminate it for no better reason than that it would be inconvenient for her to carry it to term probably does the process of evolution a disfavor. 

It is likely that the human gene pool would benefit from the removal of such genetics from it. Why add to the gene pool still another unwanted child with the chance that it will be genetically predisposed to be morally deficient? There are far too many of those around already, including the activists on both sides of that argument.

The people who argue that terminating a pregnancy is murder as well as those who argue that it is not are both only about half right. A fetus is not entirely a human being. It has the potential to become a human being, but even a newborn is nothing more than a freshly-assembled organism possessing only a set of physical attributes and genetic predispositions plus an autonomous system for programming. As yet, there is no specific program (personality) other than that which doting family members project upon it in their overly-stimulated imaginations.

“Oh, he looks like Grandpa Al”; or “Doesn't she have the chubby behind of her Great Aunt May?” Apart from such hopeful comparisons, in actual fact, there is only potential, nothing more. It is a brand new microprocessor that has yet to be programmed. There is little evidence that there is anybody there until a program initiates.

Of course, a fetus at any stage of development is already special, but no more so than that of a rodent or a bird. It represents the success of a solitary sperm, one out of a variously-estimated four to forty million, that made the journey from the male gonads to the female egg cell to achieve, against almost insurmountable odds, the process of fertilization.

This is no mean achievement. It represents an incredible journey with more hazards in it than were faced by any fictional hero in an operatic saga written by Wagner.

When a sperm finds the egg in a couple who want the child, that is good news. When this happens by misadventure through rape or random promiscuity, that is bad news. The probability that the resulting fetus may be carrying the genetics of a mother who does not want it and a father who has had the bad judgement to impregnate a woman who does not want to be pregnant is even worse news.

The fact this happens in a majority of the cases between people whose lives have yet to emerge from the chaotic conditions of social instability and/or who have developed irresponsible attitudes toward the use of drugs and/or alcohol, bodes trouble ahead for the newly-initiated fetus. 

Seeing this fetus to full term practically guarantees a minefield of dubious genetics and damaged tissues and is unlikely to serve either society or the process of human evolution in a positive direction.

Dare we remind the activists who call themselves pro-lifers that for every successful impregnation, in excess of 3,999,999 innocent little happy-face spermatozoa with little propellers flailing away behind perish in the acid secretions and gelatinous sperm traps along the route to the egg? Who represents their cause?

And of an estimated 400 eggs that a woman is destined to produce in the course of her reproductive years, only two or three get to be fertilized on the average. The remainder are unceremoniously flushed out of the system along with the inside layer of the uterus to die one or two at a time at the end of a lunar month period.

These, too, are real, live, human components. Like the sperm, which carries the male genome, the egg carries the spark and the female half of the blueprint of human life. It is the sperm and the egg that are the bearers of life from generation to generation. Who speaks for them? 

It is clear that when you really get down to it, these highly-politicized arguments about when life begins and whether to abort or not to abort can get pretty stupid.

The perennial argument between the liberal media and the Catholic Church about the use of condoms pits a side that wants to do the act without taking the risk against the edicts of a Church that tends to view human life as sacred. Can any religion afford to not view human life as sacred? Every abortion represents one more empty space in the pews come Sunday morning.

The church obviously opts for the way Nature reduces populations--through microbial attack, violence and natural selection, where the weak get eaten and only the most fit survive. It would appear that the church feels everybody should be given the chance to fight it out on their own in the arena of real life instead of ending it before it begins. It is a point worth thinking about, but not for too long.

Of course, that is what religion is for. Its purpose is to set out rules for civilized behavior. What all of these other people lining up pro and con abortion are about is still another mysterious facet of our current state of social consciousness.

Let us blame that on the robots. The household robots do the work while their owners sit around agonizing about things that should really be none of their concern.

Late abortionist Dr. Henry Morgentaler was not a leading-edge social phenomenon. That is what witches were for all along. This was their main stock-in-trade. 

Of course, the nature of their work made them not only essential to every community, but also high-profile targets when they possessed secrets regarding the wives and daughters of local officialdom that would best be left undisclosed. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to perceive what all those witch burnings were about.

Be all that as it may, the decision of whether or not to abort should be made by the woman in consultation with the man who impregnated her. If she’s not too sure of just who did it, or if he has disappeared or declines to take responsibility, then the decision, rightly or wrongly, is hers and hers alone, unless she wants to consult with her parents, priest or counselor. There is no room in such a decision for the involvement of activists, politicians, sidewalk superintendents or third-party busybodies with too much time on their hands.

The couple who decide to pair up and become responsible parents are probably fit to parent the child with a real chance of bringing a significant new life into this world. Those who decide to abort have to live with the guilt for the remainder of their now-tainted lives.

What about Morgentaler? Anyone who stoops to accept the Order of Canada following Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s highly controversial award would gladly accept a medal regardless who offered it and for whatever flimsy reason. People who do not wish to be linked in any way with this event have returned their awards and no doubt there will be many others who decline the offer in the future.

It would not be in the least surprising if some entrepreneurial spirit has already negotiated the striking of a medal even more ostentatious than the Order of Canada with the inscription, “I returned my tainted Order of Canada Medal” and offered it as a trade-up for that now sorry award. They would still have a golden gong to show off, but would be announcing clearly to all concerned that they do not want to be associated with some of the other recipients.

NOTE: Further to how a fetus relates to a finished product: Every wheat seed that is milled into flour for baking is an aborted wheat plant. Every slice of bread represents a couple of thousand aborted baby wheat plants. The same is true of every seed of every plant. Each is a complete fetus that needs only to be exposed to warmth and moisture to germinate. Plant babies such as cherry stones, which are encased in hard shells, are packaged in delicious tissues for birds and animals to eat and soften before they are excreted along with nitrogen-rich nutrients to take root in a location far from the parent plants.

Beer drinkers should be aware that beer is brewed from sprouted barley seeds, well on their way to developing into barley plants. How many thousand barley plant fetuses were aborted to brew a glass of beer?

Eggs are bird fetuses. Anyone who wants to feel guilty about eating plant or animal fetuses should go ahead, but regardless of how we choose to moralize and agonize over it, that is the way the dance of life and death works on this planet. Get used to it.

As for young Trudeau's declaration, he should consider himself lucky his parents decided not to take the option when he was conceived.