By Lyn Smith.  

The public is frequently polled on the question of induced abortion and quite often it is very difficult to interpret the results. The questions posed can reflect a bias and may actually misrepresent medical facts or the interpretation of legal rulings about abortion. A realistic result from a poll requires that a) the respondent is truly knowledgeable and b) that the answers are not merely a regurgitation of well entrenched propaganda about the abortion issue. Over the years the media, many politicians, the abortion activists and many in the medical profession have reiterated “facts” about the abortion issue which have come to be accepted by the general public as true when in fact they are not.

An analysis by Professor Raymond Adamek, Dept. of Sociology at Kent State University entitled "Abortion Polls 1965 -1998: Designed to Measure or Mold Public Opinion?" reveals the bias and inaccurate information incorporated into poll questions about ‘Roe vs. Wade.’ His assessment should send up a warning flag to us in Canada.

A 2002 Gallup poll of 1003 Canadians posed this question, “Please tell me if you personally think abortion is morally acceptable or morally wrong.” Forty percent of respondents said abortion was morally wrong.

The pro-abortion activists have always insisted that morality is never an issue and have consistently flogged the slogan “a woman’s ‘right’ to choose”. If you remember that abortion was legalized in 1969 and became virtually available on demand in 1988 (R. v. Morgentaler SCC), it is heartening that after 32 years of ‘terminations’, 40 percent of Canadians still hold that abortion is morally unacceptable.

A 2002 Leger Marketing Poll of 1501 Canadians asked at what point in human development should the law protect human life.  Thirty-seven percent responded that the law should protect human life from conception onward. In both cases it would seem that this segment of the polled population is indeed well informed about the humanity of the unborn child and are well aware of the total absence of legal protection for this child until it emerges fully live from the womb.

It would be of great interest to know the results for these same two questions if prior to responding, those polled had received the following informational quiz:

• Are you aware that the leading cause of death in Canada is induced abortion?
• Are you aware that since 1994 over 105,000 abortions are performed annually in Canada? This represents at least 287 terminations every day.
• Do you know that according to the 1999 Therapeutic Abortion Survey, Canadian Institute for Health Information at least 37% of the 110,331 induced abortions in 1998 were repeat abortions and of these 110,331 abortions, 83% were performed on women who were not married at that time?
• Do you know that for every 100 Canadian babies born alive, 32.2 babies are aborted?
• Do you know that abortion is presented by abortion activists as a woman’s issue only and that the death of the child merely represents the removal (not death) of unwanted ‘tissue’? Usually the biological father does not realize that he has no legal right to protect his unborn child from induced abortion.
• Do you know that in the 1960’s one group of 5 doctors provided the “expertise” for the Canadian Medical Association, the liaison for the Canadian Bar Association and the United Church Committee when all these bodies were dealing with the abortion question and making recommendations for changes to the law which hitherto had protected the unborn child? All five doctors were at the time performing abortions contrary to the Criminal Code and openly joked about the fact.
• Are you aware that the report of the Law Reform Commission WP #58, p. 5 “Crimes Against the Foetus” noted that “the present Code (of Criminal Law) has a curious provision…to the effect that a child doesn’t become a human being until it has proceeded from it’s mother’s body. This, far from being a proper definition of the term runs counter to the general consensus that the product of human conception, in the womb or outside it, is a human being.”
• Do you know that even Planned Parenthood has stated that “abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun”? In the absence of a protective law abortions can be performed through all 9 months of pregnancy and the only approval needed is that of the doctor who may, indeed, be the abortionist.
• Do you realize that pregnancy is not a disease: it may be ill-timed or unplanned but it is not a disease?

In an open Letter to Canada’s (then) Health Minister Allan Rock in August 15, 2001, seventeen members of Canadian Physicians for Life addressed the falsity of claiming abortion to be a “medical necessity”. They wrote, “The Canada Health Act states that provincial health insurance plans must cover ”insured health services" which include “hospital services.” These hospital services are defined in Section 2 of the Act as services which are “medically necessary for the purpose of maintaining health, preventing disease, or diagnosing or treating an injury, illness or disease.”

“Abortion is not an essential medical service. It is designated ”medically necessary" for purely social and political, not medical reasons. Pregnancy is not an “injury, illness or disease.” There is no proof that abortion improves health. In fact it disrupts a normal physiological process, poses a risk to the mother, and ends the life of her developing child.

There is no “medical necessity” where no medical benefit or health risk exists."

The letter goes on to say, “The Canada Health Act (CHA) does not require that elective procedures be funded. It would be appropriate for the CHA to include a clause that ”medically unnecessary procedures should not be funded." As an unmedical act and an untherapeutic act, abortion does not deserve a place in the roster of paid services. To justify funding of a service, the medical necessity and therapeutic value of that service should be undisputed.

Even so, in October 2002 when questioned about a lawsuit by Dr. Henry Morgentaler demanding that the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia pay him to perform abortions at his clinics, federal Minister of Health, Anne McLellan showed her government’s bias by saying abortion is a medically necessary service and should be funded no matter where performed.

• Do you know that The Canada Health Act does not mention abortion or any other services as being “medically necessary”? When the Access to Information Act was used on August 1, 2000 to ask Health Canada for documents, reports and correspondence in the department which provide evidence that abortions are “medically necessary”, the Assistant Coordinator, M. Snider stated in a letter dated March 8, 2001 that “after a thorough search of all likely record holdings, departmental officials have confirmed that they have no records relevant to your request.”
• Are you aware that for 3 years the Ontario government tried very hard in court battles to conceal the costs incurred by the tax-payer for funded abortions? Lisa Priest of the Globe and Mail wrote on January 20, 2003 that documents obtained under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act indicate that in 1998 a general practitioner in Toronto performed 2,180 abortions before or at 16 weeks gestation and 100 other abortions after 16 weeks gestation. The doctor billed the Ontario Insurance Health Plan $242,882.00 for the fiscal period 1998-99. This sum does not include billings for the cost of running the doctor’s practice.
  Note: It has been very difficult to obtain accurate figures for the expenditure of tax-payer funds but in 1994 a study done by Nancy Miller-Chenier for the Library of Parliament indicated that in the fiscal period 1992-3 Canadian taxpayers financed the abortion of 100,000 Canadian babies at the cost of $51,546,926.00.
• Do you know that the Supreme Court struck down the abortion law in 1988 on the basis of unequal access to abortion facilities? It did not rule that women have a ‘right’ to abortion, it never defined abortion as a “medical necessity”, it never ordered the provinces to pay for the elective procedure and in fact, the Supreme Court invited Parliament to enact a new law to protect the unborn child.
• Do you know that abortion which is often touted as being safer than childbirth by abortion activists has been shown in a definitive study of 9,129 women in Finland to be nearly four times deadlier than childbirth? Although published in a leading Scandinavian obstetrics journal, this government funded study has been largely ignored in North America (Action Life News, pg. 7, Nov. 2000). This failure to inform women of the personal risks from abortions and repeat abortions is part of a pattern of concealment about the immediate and long term negative effects of induced abortion. The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research in Toronto is the source for “an examination of the legal and ethical obligations of doctors to tell women about the risks associated with induced abortion” in the comprehensive report Women’s Health After Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence (Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles).

The public, if fully informed about the issue of killing Canadian babies by abortion on demand, could answer any polls only by a commitment in law for full protection of the life of the unborn child. Death is not the solution to social-economic problems.

Edited July 2006