"Each day of the week this medical drama, or one very similar is enacted in communities. Perhaps it is taking place at this very minute in your town or city. Mr. and Mrs. R. live in a northern Ontario city, have three children and sought permanent protection against unwanted pregnancy. Mr. R. had a vasectomy, and although he was found to be infertile on a subsequent sperm count, Mrs. R. became pregnant a few months later. A repeat sperm count was positive and a physical examination showed that the vans deferens, had been severed on one side only. The other side had been temporarily occluded due to swelling at the operative site,thus leading to the previously false negative sperm count. Mrs. R. sough an abortion of this pregnancy that she and her husband had tried so hard to prevent. He physician informed her that this was not possible in their city since the theraputic abortion committee passed very few applications, and then only in instances where the woman already had six or more children, or where a psychiatrist had concluded that she was likely to become insane if she could not have an abortion. Mrs. R. was forced to make two trips to Toronto, hundreds of miles away, at her own expense, to procure an abortion. The first trip was necessary in order for her to be seen by the gynecologist. She then returned home to await the deliberation of the the theraputic abortion committee. On the second trip the procedure was carried out in a Toronto hospital. Mr. and Mrs. R. were fortunate. They had the financial resources that enabled Mrs. R. to go to such extraordinary lengths to get the help she needed. But many Canadians are not so fortunate. These are the women who do not have the money to travel great distances to get abortions denied them in their own communities. They include married women who have children and whose contraceptive methods prove ineffective, as well as adolescent girls who get pregnant unwittingly, out of sexual ignorance. What are the options open to such a woman? She is unable to get a legal medical service from her local hospital because that instution interprets our abortion law in a manner which denies her the treatment that her physician recommends. Keep in mind that her health insurance premiums support that hospital. She cannot afford to travel to a larger centre where the same abortion law is interpreted in a manner which might enable her to receive help. Her list of options has already shrunk considerably. Unless she is willing to seek out and pay for the services of an illegal abortionist, she must submit to a state of compulsory pregnancy. Since very few married women with children are prepared to give up their new-born babies for adoption, this woman and her mate become, by definition, parents by compulsion. As Garret Hardin ("Abortion - Or Compulsory Pregnancy?" Journal of Marriage and the Family, xxx (May, 1968) 246-251) has pointed out, if the state denies a woman a safe legal abortion in the early stages of pregnancy before viability, it is accurate to say that she enters a state of compulsory pregnancy. By the same token, abortion laws which allow hospital abortion committees to deny women safe legal abortions are actually compulsory pregnancy laws, even thought that legislation is interpreted elsewhere in a way which makes abortion services available to unwillingly pregnant women. At first glance, the label "compulsory pregnancy" seems unduly emotive. Phrases like "pro-abortion" and "pro-life" inflame the passions and raise the temperature of the debate as well as the blood pressure of the debaters, but they shed little light on this complex subject. Is the term "compulsory pregnancy" all that inflammatory? It is true that the state did not force these couples to have sexual intercourse on the night that the woman became unwillingly pregnant; nor did the physicians on the theraputic abortion committee do anything to thwart the couple's attempts to contracept. Yet a hospital's legally constituted theraputic abortion committee, in denying any woman a safe medical abortion in the early stages of pregnancy, clearly intends her to remain pregnant against her will. Is not the label "compulsory pregnant" an appropriate one to attach to that state of affairs?" Compulsory Parenthood - The Truth about Abortion (Wendell W. Watters, M.D.) 1976 Family planning has been called "a new and important freedom in the world." (Frank W. Notestein, "Zero Population Growth: What is it?" Family Planning Perspective, II, (June 1970) No. 3, 22.) In 1968 the UN International Conference on Human Rights declared that "Any choice or decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself and cannot be made by anyone else." It then went on to state that this parental right to free choice would remain illusory unless couples were aware of the alternatives. On the basis of availability fo adequate educational and clinical services alone, family planning has a long way to go. Any freedom of choice is only a paper right unless the individual has the knowledge and the tools with which to exercise that freedom. But even if adequated educational and clinical services were universally available, would family planning, in the presence of restrictive abortion laws, become the human freedom envisioned in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights? Contraceptives are not always available, unwanted pregnancy still occurs because of human fallibility, and because no known method of contraception is completely foolproof, a fact to which thousands of couples can testify. In family planning, a freedom that stops at conception is a non-freedom. Until safe legal abortion services, completely free of all medico-legal harassment, are available to all womean who choose to use the abortion option, the UN Declaration's family planning clause confers a paper right on the women of the world. (Cont'd next message) Compulsory Parenthood - The Truth about Abortion Wendell W. Watters, M.D. (1976) In a few jurisdictions abortion is available on the request of the woman herself, and at the recommendation of her physician. In many countries abortion is illegal under all circumstances. In other countries it is legal under certain circumstances, but never simply on the grounds that the woman wishes not to be pregnant. IN CANADA, FOR EXAMPLE, UNDER SECTION 251 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE, ABORTIONS ARE LEGAL IF THERE IS A RISK TO THE WOMAN'S HEALTH IN CONTINUING THE PREGNANCY, AND ONLY IF THE ABORTION IS APPROVED BY A THERAPUTIC ABORTION COMMITTEE IN A HOSPITAL. The criteria by which a committee operates are never made public and the committees rarely interview the women herself who, interestingly, cannot appeal a negative decision. The physician members of a committee that denies a woman a safe, legal abortion are not charged with any medico-legal responsibility for her subsequent welfare of that of the child. Peculiarly, this responsibility continues to reside with her own physician, whose attempts to have the pregnancy terminated have been blocked. Few Canadians realize how effectively the government and various power blocs make it almost impossible for many Canadian women to take advantage of our ostensibly liberal abortion law. The law does not require a hospital to provide abortion services, and many do not, especially in areas where anti-abortion power blocs control local hospital policies. Abortion is a moral issue; more accurately, it is many moral issues. The central question is the value placed on the foetus. Can there be such a thing as foetal rights? This one question has pushed aside other ethical issues. Abortion is not an acceptable means of birth control, nor is it individually or socially desirable. We need to reduce the need for abortion through improved sex education programs in schools, additional training for health-care professionals in family planning, and research into contraceptive technology. Unless a technically perfect contraceptive, and a perfectly motivated human being are developed, the need for abortion services will stay. The abortion issue also forces us to deal with other questions about human reproductivity; questions that go beyond the matter of whether a nonviable foetus is human or has a soul. How important is the act of creating a new human life? Should society persist in the 'laissea-faire' approach in which a new life is an almost automatic consequence of unprotected sex? Or should society expect some judgment on the part of the sexually active couple who choose to become parents? -(Compulsory Parenthood - The Truth about Abortion) Author: Wendell W. Watters, M.D. 1976