The Winnipeg Free Press weighs in on women's rights to informed consent

The better of our city's two newspapers published an article involving the organization that's dearest to my heart - the Family Support Centre/Crisis Pregnancy Centre - in what I judge to be a desparate bid to create a news story on the 20th anniversary of the decision to end all protection for unborn human life in Canada. The authors actually did not too bad a job of reamining neutral, although their or their editor's bias in favour of abortion comes through strongly. Still I want to comment on a couple of things that I've been thinking about.

First, the title, "Caring or Scaring?" implies that the 2 are opposites. Don't get me wrong, I cannot see anyone I know at the FSC deliberately setting out to scare someone. But sometimes information is scary, especially information about the risks of medical interventions. When I was making the decision to vaccinate, I had pro-vaccine literature proclaiming the scariness of diseases and anti-vaccine literature proclaiming the scariness of vaccine adverse reactions. When I was pregnant I heard my doctor deride home birth for it's dangers and I read authors who pointed out the dangers of giving birth in a hospital. We are told the scary results of smoking, drunk driving, sex without condoms and consuming an ice cube infected with Hepatitis; and we hear these on a daily basis. It is generally expected that the medical profession will inform us of risks.

Abortion is treated completely different. People bend over backwards to assure us of the safety, legality, morality and absolute emotional relief that surrounds all abortions. There is so little talk of risk, of regret.

But there are risks, both physical and emotional. To vocalize those risks might sound scary, but it is not for the purpose of scaring, it is for the purpose of having good information in order to make decisions based on all variables. That FSC does this should be applauded. That Klinic, Women's Health Klinic, SERC, Mount Carmel Clinic and other pro-abortion outlets don't is a major disservice to women. It takes on the flavour of "We know best dear, you can't handle knowing these things." I believe women should be empowered. What do they believe?

Another interesting quote was about women who visit CPCs and still go for abortions: "They think they're doing something wrong, and they have a lot to overcome." I wonder, if they have a client who honestly believes she is doing something wrong, why one earth would you perform an abortion on her rather than helping her find ways to cope with her pregnancy and feel better about carrying to term?

The section "The Claims and The Experts" makes issues seem cut and dried that really are not. Take abortion and breast cancer. There have been studies that demonstrate relationships (note, I did not say causal relationships - cause and effect can be difficult to prove in research where variables can't be controlled) between abortion and breast cancer. That's why the carefully worded claims are about "at the present time" and that a conclusion, "is not supported." Personally, even if all the research ducks are not in a row, I would want to know about possible risks as well as probable risks and definite risks. There seems to be enough evidence to be cautious. This link seems to have good information on the subject. It is also important to understand that 1) people within organizations can have abortion biases and 2) there is not a 100% consensus on the matter, with some researchers believing that the evidence is strong enough to warrant more definitive conclusions, and some bodies, including the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, favouring disclosure of possible risks even if the research is not completely sure about causation.

Second, they refer to post abortion syndrome or post abortion stress disorder and say that this is not a diagnosis. This is true. It is not. But as a wise man pointed out to me, we know that war causes stress and trauma issues later but there is no post-war diagnosis either. Not having a named diagnoses in a manual does not mean that women do not suffer after effects. Thousands, perhaps millions of women have reported negative effects from their abortions. Are we to believe they are all lying? Insane? I don't favour using the terms syndrome or disorder, I think we should stick to descriptions of what women experience. But the point is not whether experiences have a label but that women have profoundly negative experiences and deserve to know of that possibility prior to deciding whether or not to have an abortion.

The information about infection rates assumes that the WRHA tracks infections following abortion. I'm not sure they do. Abortion as I understand it is an outpatient procedure. The doctor doing the abortion would not immediately know that a patient was going to be infected. When a woman does experience an infection, she is not likely to go back to the place she had the abortion, she is more likely to go to her family doctor or a walk-in. And she may not tell that doctor she had an abortion, and if she did, I'm not sure that there is a tracking measure to link the infection to her abortion. So I don't trust the rates, automatically. I would want to see research that followed women after abortions. Even if infection rates are low, in the aggregate, that can still mean 1000s of women who get infections from abortions. That would also apply to "the serious complication rate" quoted in the article. If I thought I even had 1/100 chance of not being able to conceive again because of an abortion, I would want to know this. I also don't consider a 1/100 chance "extremely rare", again, in the aggregate that is 1000s of women who experience "serious complications."

Then there's the quote about infertility from U.S. National Abortion Federation. Gosh, no, they couldn't possibly be biased.

I was glad to see numerous letters of support in the Wednesday edition. Almost ended up feeling as if we'd won. But we didn't win - winning only happens each time people say "Yes" to giving life to unborn children.