To the feminists it is all about power. They will allow no exceptions to their principle of absolute power over life in the womb. In all their literature, in all their rhetoric and slogans we witness this. But they go further. When a pregnant woman immediately before an abortion is ambivalent about exercising such morbid power, the abortion-providing, radical feminists are there “empowering” her to go ahead and end the life of her unborn child.

Clearly, there is no love in this kind of power and ultimately for the women it is destructive. Whether she is empowered to overcome fear, insecurity, or conscience, she is never empowered to deny life to her own offspring without doing harm to her power to love and give of herself as a woman and as a mother. The maternal instinct she is “empowered to ignore is her very real and natural bonding to the dependent child crying out for her nurturing, love and protection. To ignore this silent cry and take the life of the dependent child ultimately devalues her own life by severing the most basic and natural bond of love a woman can have, and it is the reason why so many women after and abortion feel themselves aborted.

True sense of loss

Even abortion providers readily admit that all women after an abortion feel a sense of loss. What is this sense of loss but a part of their own selves integrally bonded to the dependent life lost forever? These unfortunate women go on to live fragmented lives often unable to properly nurture and love, and seldom do they ever find fulfillment or happiness. Becoming “empowered to make a choice to end the life of a dependent child does not empower the woman to suffer the consequences and they live in a state of guilt and denial until they are able to reach out for help and reconcile.

It is most ironic that in the name of women’s rights, the highest courts in the United States and Canada regard viability of the child as the only consideration with respect to curtailing the right to abortion. The courts tend to hold that the greater the development and chance of the child surviving were it to be apart from the mother, the greater should be its right to life. Conversely this means that the more dependent the child on the mother for its life the greater her legal right to kill it. Yet, it does not make it any easier for the mother to reconcile the death of the child on the basis of viability, for whether totally dependent on the mother or more viable, the child is a distinct and defenseless human being and its death is a result of her “choice.” It is abhorrent to all sense of duty, charity and the principles of democracy, and it is inimical to the well-being of the women, that human dependency is made the justification for this most crippling right to kill.

(Paul Formby is a B.C. Defence attorney and a founding member of Campaign Life Coalition).