If abortion is undeniably the taking of human life and yet sincere misguided people feel that it should be just a personal matter between a women and the doctor, there seems to be 2 choices open to them. (1) That they would believe that other acts of destruction of human beings such as infanticide and homicide should be of no concern of society and therefore, eliminate them from the criminal code. This I cannot believe is the thinking of the majority, although the tendency for doctors to respect the selfish desire of parents and not treat the newborn defective with a necessary lifesaving measure, is becoming increasingly more common. (2) But for the most part the only conclusion available to us is that those pressing for repeal of the abortion laws believe that there are different sorts of human beings and that by some arbitrary standard, they can place different values on the lives of there human beings. Of course, different human beings have different values to each of us as individuals: my mother means more to me than she does to you. But the right to life of all human beings is undeniable. I do not think this is negotiable. It is easy to be concerned with the welfare of those we know and love, while regarding everybody else as less important and somehow, less real. Most people would rather have heard of the death of thousands in the Honduras flooding disaster than of a serious accident involving a close friends or favourite relatives. That is why some are less disturbed by the slaughter of thousands of unborn children than by the personal problems of a pregnant women across the street. To rationalize this double standard, they pretend to themselves that the unborn child is a less valuable human life because it has no active social relationships and can therefore, be disposed of by others who have an arbitrary standard of their own for the value of a human life.

I agree that the fetus has not developed it's full potential as a human being: but neither have any of us. Nor will any of us have reached that point: that point of perfect humaness, when we die. Because some of us may be less far along the path than others, does not give them the right to kill us. But those in favour of abortion, assume that they have that right, the standard being arbitrary. To say that a 10 week fetus has less value that a baby, means also that one must consider a baby of less value than a child, a young adult of less value than an old man. Surely one cannot believe this and still be civilized and human. A society that does not protect its individual members is on the lowest scale of civilized society. One of the measures of a more highly civilized society, is its attitude towards its weaker members. If the poor, the sick, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the helpless are not protected, the society is not as advanced as in a society where they are protected. The more mature the society is, the more there is respect for the dignity and rights of all human beings. The function of the laws of the society, is to protect and provide for all members so that no individual or group of individuals can be victimized by another individual group. Every member of Canadian society has a vital stake in what value system is adopted towards its weak, aged, cripple, it's helpless intra-uterine members; a vital stake in who chooses life or death.

As some of you may know, in 1969, the abortion laws were changed in Canada, so that it became legal for a doctor to perform an abortion if a committee of 3 other doctors in an eccredited hospital deemed that continuation of the pregnancy constituted a severe threat to the life and health, mental or physical of the women. Threat to health was not defined and so it is variously interpreted to mean very real medical disease to anything that interferes with even social or economic well being, so that any unwanted or unplanned pregnancy thus qualifies. What really is the truth about the lasting effect of an unwanted pregnancy on the psyche of a womem? Of course there is a difference of opinion among psychiatrists, but if unbiased, prospective studies are examined certain facts become obvious. (1) The health of women who are mentally ill before they become pregnant, is not improved by an abortion. In fact in 1970 an official statement of the World Health Organization said, "Serious mental disorders arise more often in women previous mental problems. Thus the very women for whom legal abortion is considered justified on psychiatric grounds, are the ones who have the highest risk of post-abortion psychiatric disorders. (2) Most women who are mentally healthy before unwanted pregnancy, despite a temporary emotional upset during the early weeks for the pregnancy, are mentally healthy after the pregnancy whether they were aborted or carried through to term.