When abortion bill C-43 was introduced, Prime Minister Mulroney commended it: It’s a reasonable bill. It takes a moderate position for a modern country.”

In fact he defended and recommended a law surrounded by cynicism, hypocrisy and lies. What is more, he ordered his cabinet members to vote for it—even against their own consciences.

Let us look at three lies:

  1. That abortion is a medical decision. Analyzing British Statistics, Life News recently pointed out that in Great Britain in 1987 “Mother’s condition: physical” was cited as grounds for abortion in only 811 cases, or .46 per cent of the total. “Mother’s condition: mental” was cited in 157 699 cases. The paper concluded, “99 per cent of abortions are done for non serious reasons. Most of these could scarcely be called “medical” reasons at all and often amount to no more than social convenience.

These statistics confirm the data presented by the Badgely Report in our own country—that the usual excuse for abortion is mental stress, and that the excuse cannot be taken seriously: “Many physicians whom the Committee met on its visits to hospitals across Canada openly acknowledged that their diagnoses for mental health were given for purposes of expediency and they could not be considered as a valid assessment of an abortion patient’s state of mental health.”

In fact, Toronto neurosurgeon Dr. Harley Smyth calls abortion “mass elective feticide for non-medical reasons.”

Again there was no medical reason for example in the cases of Barbara Dodd or Chantal Daigle, of recent summer fame. Barbara regretted having an abortion and clearly she could have had her baby; Chantal had an abortion on the grounds that the child might have suffered injury after birth. Neither case involved medical reasons.

  1. That doctors can be trusted to apply a reasonable interpretation of health. As has been pointed out above, they have not done so in the past, and there is no reason to expect them to do so in the future. A woman will be virtually assured of having an abortion if she wants one. If her own doctor turns her down, she can always go to one of the professional abortionists who will be guaranteed to interpret “psychological health” in a very broad way.
  1. That the legislation provides a balance between the rights of the woman and the rights of the fetus. It provides no protection for the unborn child at all. If there have been 80 000 abortions a year before the passage of the law (should it be enacted), there will be 80 000 a year or more afterwards. The abortionist will continue to stick strictly to commercial standards, not medical or ethical ones.