Re: “Women’s health doesn’t include access to abortion,” a letter by Gerald Hall of Parksville, B.C. (Gazette, Feb. 24).
Can women still die due to childbirth and pregnancies? Anyone (including Hall) should know that pregnancies can be very dangerous. My dear wife almost died after the birth of her last child. Her uterus ruptured and she bled so profusely that doctors were unable to transfer blood back into her fast enough! She technically died on the operating room table! Her heart stopped! She flat-lined for several seconds! A pregnancy had killed her! Miracles of modern medical procedures brought her back to life!
In view of this medical fact, plus many others like it, I must say that a pregnancy can be a serious risk to the life of a woman and that no woman should be forced to remain pregnant (regardless of what the Pope and his ilk might demand). All unwanted pregnancies could possibly be simply terminated shortly after menstruation fails to take place. Pregnancy terminations need not demand the abortion of any fetus. The simple ejection of a microscopic embryo is how terminations could take place.
If all women could terminate all unwanted pregnancies only a few days after missing normal menstruation, the abortions of unwanted “babies” could become things of the past.
If the propagation of life was the only moral matter, we’d be obligated to reproduce like rabbits! Life is sacred. It’s also a gift from each of our mothers who risked their lives so that we might have ours. As such, I must agree with Michael Ignatieff for saying, “The right to abortion is too ‘sacred’ to become a political football.” In a humane and intelligent society, the rights of pregnant women should far outweigh all or any supposed rights of the “unborn” who become recognized as citizens only after being born.
The termination of an unwanted pregnancy must unquestionably be recognized to be an absolute human right for all women.
Richard G. Nobert, Morinville
