From a letter to H. Morgentaler

Dear Henry:

Forgive the liberty of calling you by your first name.  It’s just that I feel I know you so well after all these years of watching and listening.  I would have written before but there didn’t seem to be any point.  You seemed so single-mindedly consumed with the pursuit of your career.  I was sure you wouldn’t be interested in anything I had to say.  However, having just read Katherine Govier’s article on you, in the October issue of Quest, I was moved to act because I have something to put to you. 

When we first made our acquaintance, ten years ago, you were debating Malcolm Muggeridge at U.B.C.  You probably won’t remember me.  I was one of several hundred students, but I sure remember you.  I was deeply embroiled at University in the study of classical psychoanalysis – you know those guys, Freud, Breuer, Adler and company.  Consequently, I found myself inflicting on you a little interpretation of my own.  After all, you offered such rich material, I couldn’t resist.  First of all, when I heard that your father was mostly absent as you were growing up – I pricked up my ears.  Then when I heard that your mother was “unloving” and “authoritarian” (Govier’s words) and that you felt neglected by her, well, you have to excuse me, but it all fell together – psychoanalytically speaking.  One feels compassion for the kind of childhood you must have had.  My God!  I thought, with sharpest clarity I saw why you had turned to doing abortions with such a vengeance!  All that female gratitude pouring over him day after day I thought!  Women looking on him as their hero – bathing him in warmth…what crippled psyche (and who doesn’t relate to that?) desperate for a mother’s lost love could resist basking in this and want to continue such a steady stream of adoration; in fact want to seek it out energetically.  Who would blame you – I mean all of us would be grateful for a way of working out our neuroses.  (Your chosen ‘field’ also, and not coincidentally I think, involves ‘fixing’ all these would-be mothers, but more of that later…)

But here’s the rub Henry, and also the reason I’m writing to you, I think it’s time to turn all this around.  God knows, we all bring degrees of bitterness and pain from our childhood, it goes with the territory – ask any $500,000 a year shrink.  But there’s a limit to what we can do to find therapeutic substitutions and when it involves taking life in order to get that release – well, enough already.  I know you will agree with me when I say that you don’t believe in what you’re doing – after all, didn’t I read in Govier’s adoring article your own words, “We are not against fetuses”.  Fine then Henry – leave them where they are, okay?

I read that you lost your belief in God during the war.  But surely, that’s not tantamount to losing your belief in right and wrong?  And, carrying that to its logical conclusion, one cannot believe that a man whose father – reportedly dedicated to the betterment of humanity – could have produced a son, who at the moment when that fetus is ripped out of that womb – doesn’t know, somewhere in the deepest levels of his mind, that it’s just, quite wrong.

Speaking of your father, you have said that you idolized him and your poem, “The greatness of your martyrdom/ your holiness and goodness/ are too much for me to bear/ I will never reach them.”  Is very moving.  What do you think he would feel about his son the abortionist?  Please, endure and tolerate my being so personal – there’s a lot at stake.  Your father was a man who devoted his life to the trade union movement.  I know and admire his kind.  I myself was spawned from the industrial North of England, the birthplace of the trade union movement.  These were people who cared deeply about the quality of life and who were prepared to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of future generations.  They endured great hardship and never ever took a quick and easy solution.  I think one could easily classify abortion as both quick and easy (you pride yourself on how quick and easy it all is) don’t you?  It’s hard to think of a father being proud to hear that his son grinds dead fetuses down his carburetor (your own words to a Winnipeg reporter) and makes $100,000 (1982) a year, working only three days a week doing it!

I read all the time that you do abortions because you care deeply about the dignity of women.  Oh, really?  That’s one wild and crazy way of showing you care about her dignity Henry.  And if that woman (remaining unrepentant) thinks she has any dignity after she’s exposed herself to that experience – well, there’s some Florida swampland any Real Estate Agent would like her to see!

Abortion simply has no place in the lives of women who have a profoundly fundamental sense of the essence of their womanhood.  And, when they all rediscover this, watch out Doctor.

Govier reports that you’re not a “good team man”.  Well, I guess we’ve all seen that.  She writes that you’re rather rigid and given to being impatient with people.  (Since the patient in the stirrups is in no position to talk back, and the fetus can’t, one can see why it’s such a great bonus for you – being an abortionist).  You say that you want to be a “benefactor of mankind” – well CUSO would just love to get their hands on you.  They are so desperate for medical personnel in the Third World.  And what incredible gratification you would get from becoming a practicing physician again and keeping all those needy children alive and well – now there’s an act of benefaction.  Because, no matter how you dress it up Henry, abortion is just not an act of benefaction.  It could be described as several things: an act of convenience, even an act of commerce, and of course, that eternal thorn in your side, an act of killing.  An act of benefaction it ain’t.  So what do you say Doctor?  Give CUSO a ring, why don’t you.  The money’s no good, but you’ve so often said you’re not in it for the money.  Who knows, with such a good example you could contribute to a kinder, more caring society – you are an extremely newsworthy individual as you know.  You might even change things around to the happy state where women would want to have a live birth instead of a dead fetus.  

I hear you say your bit about every child being a wanted and a loved child.  For the abuse inflicted on children, we must all carry the burden of guilt until we can stop it.  But, doing abortions isn’t going to stop it.  All that killing!  How many lives would have been filled with joy because of that fetus being allowed to live rather than die.  I don’t envy you such knowledge.  How much happiness have you destroyed?

By the way, I was puzzled to read, in the article in Quest that you don’t find the procedure to abortion challenging.  Heavens.  I shouldn’t think it would challenge a rhesus monkey – in fact, it must be as boring as hell.  Really Henry, you should be careful what you say, people will start thinking you’re not too smart.  Well there it is.  I’ve done my best.  All I can do now is sit and wait and hope that a tiny seed has been planted (you should pardon the expression).  Please don’t insult our intelligence any longer by telling us that the reason you do abortions is to improve the quality of life.  Tell me, what did those thousands of babies die for?  Where is the quality of life that they sacrificed their lives for?

Think of your father, grind your vacuum aspirator down the carburetor and head for Africa.  God go with you Henry, we all pray for your speedy recovery.

Sincerely,

Bernadette O’Hara