A family physician answers
Pro-life physician Dr.Larry Reynolds believes that when women achieve equality they will demand to know the truth about the consequences of abortion to women, and the pro-life position will be validated.
One hot night last summer at 3 a.m., Dr.Larry Reynolds delivered a baby boy at St. Joseph’s Hospital in London, Ontario. After a few hours’ sleep, he caught a train to Toronto where he addressed a group of pro-life physicians [ on abortion].
Although his day began early, he was doing what he loves best about family practice- seeing a mother through her pregnancy and attending the live birth of her baby.
The awe surrounding a baby’s birth extends beyond the medical aspects involved, he says, and at each birth he’s profoundly moved by the transcendence of life. That’s one reason why he’s so appalled by abortion.
Twenty years ago, as part of surgical elective when he was third-year medical student at the University of Manitoba, he wandered into an operation room to observe. He saw a suction machine at the end of the operating table, draining red sludge from the patient. At the time he didn’t think much about it, but he sensed a tension beneath the normal operating room atmosphere.
Later he learned that he has witnessed an abortion.
In his talk, “Does Abortion Exploit Women?” to the Canadian Physicians for Life last summer in Toronto, Dr. Reynolds, 42, recalled the dilemma of a young physician educated in the 1970s in the midst of the women’s liberations movement. Anxious to see women assume their full and equal rights in society, he sympathized with their aims. Still, Dr. Reynolds was puzzled by their promotion of abortion to achieve equality and wondered if it would emancipate or exploit women.
He began to study feminist arguments for abortion. Early on he realized abortion was an attack on the biological giftedness of women who alone can give birth. To make it acceptable, feminists found it necessary to label pregnancy “ a biological liability” and “ a disease” that could be attacked and terminated.
An entire feminist vocabulary around pregnancy had to be manufactured : “baby” became “fetus” pr “product of conception,” the “right to life” became “the right to choose” and abortion became “termination of pregnancy.” This jargon, which depersonalizes a human being’s natural disinclination to kill, brutalizes women’s rights, he believes.
In his practice, he sees women who seek abortion “because of their working conditions, not because of what is going on inside them.” They feel they have “no choice” because their jobs, a fact that bellies the feminist argument of “choice” for pregnant women.
For example, women in the medical profession seek abortions three times more often than do the wives of physicians because pregnancy is a liability in their career advancement or training- a lamentable fact in a supposedly caring profession.
Dr. Reynolds says that the normal, healthy way to end a pregnancy is “ not for a man with a high-powered vacuum machine to fix up a women” but for her to give birth with power and dignity.
Abortionists ignore the well documented current literature on perinatal loss in women who have suffered stillbirth or miscarriage. Among the million-and-a-half women aborted in Canada since 1969, many suffer the same perinatal loss- called post-abortion syndrome. This unhealed suffering of aborted women, a corollary of the silent holocaust of the unborn, causes social isolation, emotional damage and chemical dependence.
Abortion, says Dr. Reynolds, does not emancipate women but exploits them. “We should restructure society, not pregnancy. But as Mother Teresa says, we should do so with love, never underestimating the power of prayer- even for a Dr. Morgentaler.” He believes that when women achieve equality they will demand to know the truth about the consequences of abortion to women, and the pro-life-position will be validated.
Dr. Reynolds was raised in Brandon, Manitoba, the second of four children whose parents were “good Canadians.” He won Science and English medals in high schools and placed first in the 1967 Reach for the Top provincial competition.
In pre-med studies he won Anatomy and Physiology medals, and at the University of Manitoba, where he studied medicine, he was on the dean’s list for four years and won the medal for medicine.
In 1975 he was named “ Intern of the Year” and went on to complete a specialty in Family Medicine. He was on staff at St. Boniface Hospital for fourteen years, where he taught, did research (in which he has a masters degree and won two Canada Research awards from the College of Family Medicine) and had practice in Family Medicine Obstetrics.
But his most prized award was winning his wife, Wilma, and intensive care nurse, whom he married in 1976.They have three children: Elizabeth, 14, Matthew, 12, and Sarah, 10. With a touch of mischief he describes their whirlwind romance, recalling, “we met in December, were engaged in February and married in May. We had to get married.” Then, after a wicked pause, he adds. “ Wilma had bought the fabric for her wedding gown before we were engaged.”
In Winnipeg, Dr. Reynolds found the time and energy to be on advisory, moral and research committees, to make many presentations at medical seminars and conferences in Canada and the U.S., to publish articles in Family Medicine journals, to be a lay reader in his Anglican Church, and to be a pro-life activist.
He picked a Winnipeg hospital that did abortions and was Chairman of a Crisis Pregnancy Centre and Medical Advisor to the national pro-life organization, Alliance For Life, giving many pro-life talks to church, community and professional groups.
In 1900, he and his family moved to London, Ontario where he is Associate professor of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. Here he is on staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital where he continues to teach and to do research. But of all his medical activities h, the one he likes best is being with his patients.
He says the issue of abortion often comes up in his practice because he sees many obstetrical patients. If a woman’s asks him for an abortion, he tells her he doesn’t do them because he wouldn’t do her harm or harm her baby- that’s not what he went into medicine for.
He’ll ask why she wants the abortion and answer her reason gently and fully, and go over feminist arguments, step by step, all the while educating medical students and residents on medical rounds with him. Then he’ll tell the woman the he’ll support her throughout the pregnancy and refer her to appropriate agencies for financial and social assistance if she needs it. If she persists and says, “What am I supposed to do?” he will answer, “You’re and intelligent women. I’m offering you what I can do to help you.” Often that woman will change her mind.
At the end of a long day, he credits Wilma with giving him moral support, especially when he’s stressed out. She allows him to be away from home to give pro-life talks because she understands the importance of the issue. In occasional leisure time, he relaxes by playing squash, by reading philosophy, theology and biographies, or by canoeing and being outdoors with his family.
Dr. Reynolds says he loves his job. “ It challenges me to help people and I think God wanted me to be in medicine and in the pro-life movement.”
And every time he attends a delivery, he draws new inspiration and energy. His face brightens when he says, “ Birth reminds me that God has faith in the world and that life is worth protecting.”
