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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 34, Number 10. 1971

Medicine and Abortion

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Medicine and Abortion.

Despite disclaimers from conservative medical spokesmen, there are many conditions that a woman may be suffering from which would be greatly worsened by carrying a fetus to term and giving birth. There are on record, cases in the U.K. and Canada since the passage of reformed abortion legislation there, where women suffering from cancer, Hodgkin's disease, cardiac disease and other such illnesses, have been refused abortions. Sir Francis Adams, in "Criminal Law and Practice in New Zealand" says: "In cases coming within the present group of sections a surgeon may well find himself in the dilemma that if he operates he may be held to have offended against one or more of those sections, whereas if he refuses to operate he may be called upon to face a charge of manslaughter of the mother," A serious situation indeed, and one calling for more outspokenness on the part of all sectors of the medical profession in this country. As Dr. Alec Bourne in theeelebrated English abortion case of 1938 reasoned, it is difficult to the point of impossibility to draw a distinct line between health and life itself. If a woman lives for a few weeks or months after the birth of an unwanted child, if all the strains of caring for an unwanted child are added to the previous stresses and the woman's death is hastened by weeks, by months or by years, is this adherence to the strictest letter of the law a salve to the conscience of such doctors?

Again, it is maintained by some medical spokesmen in New Zealand that abortion is a dangerous operation. Statistics are quoted in order to "prove" this statement but the spokesmen are either deliberately dishonest or unprofessionally careless. For New Zealand abortion statistics are meaningless, because in order to obtain a legal abortion it is necessary for a woman to be suffering from a severe if not dangerous illness. It is only when abortions are permitted on demand, upon normally healthy women, that meaningful statistics can be obtained. In Hungary, for example, statistics show that deaths from abortion amount to 6 per 100,000. To put this in perspective, it should be added that deaths from tonsillectomies average 17 per 100,000, while maternal deaths in childbirth average 24 per 100,000. As far as the safety of the woman is concerned, abortion by a doctor in a hospital or clinic is four times safer than childbirth itself.

In fact, in recent years, new and safer methods of abortion have been increasingly used, not only in China and the USSR where they originated, but in North America and other areas. The main new methods are either the vibrator-and-section method, or suction by itself; they can be performed much more safely and quickly than the old fashioned 'd and c.' (This is the operation used in the first 12 weeks for an abortion, as well as for other medical indications; it involves dilating the cervix and scraping the walls of the uterus). After three months, when it is no longer possible to performed a 'd and c,' two methods are possible: a) a saline injection to induce labour, or b) what is in effect a minor caesarian operation. Both have considerably higher risks, as is shown by abortion statistics from Scandanavia. There, the cumbersome committee meetings required, result in many late abortions with increased dangers.

It is a remarkable fact that the fetus has differing values according to whether it is attached to the uterus or whether it is dead. As long as it is alive it is variously considered state property, Sacred and Innocent Human Life (presumably opposed to some other, guilty type of life) or a potential human being. Once dead, however, it does not require a death certificate up to twenty weeks, or nearly five months; and it does not require and is rarely given any kind of burial. In point of fact, this tiny combination of dead cells is disposed of like any other pathological material in a hospital, like a diseased appendix or amputated limb. It is treated as rubbish. As it becomes more widely known that an extremely large number of fertilized ova at various stages of development are sloughed off by women throughout the world in menstrual flow, even Roman Catholics begin to re-examine their position. A North American Catholic theologian stated that if indeed the church were convinced that a fertilized ovum were possessed of a soul, then "we should have to insist that a search should be made in the menstrual flow of every woman who has had sufficiently recent matrimonial (sic) intercourse to see if there were not some germ there, or, better still, we ought to pour baptismal water on this blood, taking care that the water should penetrate everywhere, and pronouncing "sub-conditione" (of life) the baptismal words".

If it were not for the lives of girls and women, traumatized by illegal abortions or by the birth of illegitimate or unwanted children—then such statements would indeed be hilarious.

Another argument used by anti-abortionists is that women who have abortions suffer severe guilt and depression, amounting to serious mental damage Any person who performs an act that has been sternly taught as immoral, is going to suffer guilt feelings about it. Doubtless the New Guinea headhunters who fail to hunt sufficient heads, suffer pangs of guilt and shame in their particular circumstances... As far as statistics can show, a woman's guilt after an abortion depends upon her religious and moral beliefs and those of her environment rather than upon the act of abortion itself. For example, women in Norway where there is a less harsh attitude towards unmarried mothers and premarital sex, and something of an acceptance of abortion as a necessary evil, the number of women suffering severe metal depression after an abortion amounts to 2%. But in Switzerland, a country so anti-feminist that women have only recently been granted the vote, the rate is nearly 50%. Another factor to be taken into account and not apparent in these statistics, is that a certain proportion of people including women, at any given time may be suffering from mental stresses; and these can be made worse by say, abortions on the one hand, or on the other by unwanted pregnancies and their often tragic results. Catholics who have abortions have among them a higher proportion of guilty and depressed women than do Protestants or Jews.

In countries like New Zealand, where public information on abortion is extremely limited, and public debate of very low calibre, it is particularly reprehensible that some doctors take it upon themselves to pass noisy moral judgement in the matter of abortion. Their expertise extends only to medical matters, in morals they are no more and no less competent than the poorest and most ignorant woman with a problem pregnancy. If doctors or their associates have genuine moral objections to performing such operations, their consciences should of course be respected; so also however should the consciences of those women who believe that having an abortion in their particular situation is the most moral decision for them.

Another argument used is that the illegal abortion rate tends to rise where abortions are somewhat more freely granted. This argument is entirely accurate; as women begin to become aware of their oppression in bearing unwanted children their self-respect blossoms and they become assertive over their new-found rights. If they are denied legal abortions they tend not to suffer passively any longer, but to act on their own behalf and obtain an illegal one. The only way to cut down on illegal abortions is to promote most vigorously all manner of birth control and to repeal all abortion laws, leaving the matter of abortion to the woman, her conscience, and any medical practitioner who feels morally free to perform the operation.

Some of the methods used by women, usually in full knowledge of the dangers involved but desperate enough to risk their health and their lives, are: pieces of wire or sticks prodded into the uterus; the pumping of air into the uterus; drugs and potions of various kinds which can cause insanity, blindness or death; the suction of a vacuum cleaner; syringing with various liquids such as soap solutions. Some of these methods have been known to accomplish abortions; some can cause injuries resulting in infections like peritonitis; some cause massive haemorrhages endangering life; some result in sterility; some, such as the use of the vacuum cleaner, in instant death.