Archived Letter – 443

Dear Editor: I fear that some of your readers have missed the mark completely with regards to anti abortionists. They may say they ‘get it’, why we consider abortion as murder, but do they truly understand? If they did there would be no debate. The very thought of having an abortion would go against every moral cell in my body. There’s where lies the difference. My beliefs tell me that life begins at conception and that I shouldn’t do any harm to my neighbour (i.e. murder). Those two ideas coexist and become one notion, or morale if you will. With that in mind the equation along with an answer seems simple to me. Man + woman + X = pregnancy, X being the factor of intimacy, we all know this. I’m not interested in the specifics of X because I know we live in a world where there are many who have few to no morals and misuse and abuse this. There are also many situations that seem to been unfair or wrong. That’s the world we live in. Bad things happen. If you don’t know this then wake up. Abortion is merely a solution to those who feel that there are no other answers. Well there are other answers and sorry, but they involve more laws. Who knows if there were more laws, we may even prevent unwanted abortions before they’re too late. And hey, if there were a few more laws we might not have to drop so much tax dollars on abortion clinics. This country keeps those expensive clinics busy, don’t you know. Let’s look at the numbers shall we? In 2010 there were a reported 64,641 abortions (not including Quebec). Ontario alone took part in 28,765 of those. That’s almost 10,000 more people than the town of Fergus. Now, imagine what the number would actually be if there were at least laws to maintain an accurate record! Of the aforementioned total number in Canada, 27,576 were done in hospitals. Some of those hospitals recorded the gestational age of the baby. While there were almost half done in the 9-12 week age there were an abominable 537 done in the 21 week and older age. Isn’t that the threshold period were a baby can survive outside the womb? Don’t you need to have a funeral for a baby at or around that age? Don’t Canadians find it a bit odd that these babies have no legal protection? Not to mention we have to keep in mind that these numbers represent only the recorded ages (there were close to 5000 recorded with unknown ages) and exclude the ones done in an entire province, Quebec. I am convinced that there are many more people who share my morals, and we would in fact outnumber those who don’t care. It would be interesting to see what those numbers would be if it came down to a poll. Doug Vanderveen Belwood

doug vanderveen