Youth Blog

“Canada is really at the frontier of abortion advocacy around the world, and is really pushing the limits of it,” said Dr. Calum Miller, Research Associate at Oxford University during the keynote speech the Rose Dinner following the May 11th National March for Life in Ottawa.

“So, you are really showing the rest of the world where the abortion debate is headed … So, you have an immense challenge, but also an immense responsibility,” he added.

Dr. Miller, during his speech, spoke about the future of pro-life advocacy, and the three battlelines where the fighting is currently taking place in the war to protect innocent human life, defend vulnerable women, and end abortion. He painted a precise picture of what the fight looks like on these battle lines.

Censorship

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The first thing Dr. Miller spoke about was censorship of the pro-life voice in the public square. Its increase in recent years ought to be a concern for pro-lifers. He said that there is a “global attempt, not just in Canada, to impose censorship zones outside of abortion clinics, preventing any kind of pro-life speech at all, even the giving of factual information or offering support to women in need.”

To show how far this kind of censorship has gone, he brought up the example of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce who was arrested twice in the last 8 months for “praying silently or thinking silently” in the vicinity of an abortion centre in the UK.

Dr. Miller then explained why it is so important for pro-lifers to fight laws that ban their speech or their ability to be physically present at abortion centres. He spoke of “the need for people outside [abortion] clinics.”

He listed statistics on the commonality of coerced abortion, citing a study in the US that found that “95% of women having an abortion felt at least some pressure either from another person in their life, or from their circumstances.” He also spoke about the ambivalence of women who are considering abortion and about the subpar nature of abortion counselling, and that even in places where it is mandatory, women often report not receiving the counselling and information that they wanted or desired. Among the statistics that Dr Miller cited, he cited one that found that “nearly half of women who wanted to hear about alternatives to abortion, did not hear about alternatives to abortion.”

He also explained the problem of children who are not being informed before giving consent to abortion, and the legal and moral problems contained in that issue.

With these reasons, Dr. Miller illustrated why it was so important for pro-life advocates to fight for the right to be near abortion mills and have the right to speak in the public square. “Tens of thousands of women are not given the information that they want and that they are owed.  Women deserve to have information about alternative options and the offer of practical support and yet this choice, real choice, is denied to women,” he said.

Finally, Dr Miller spoke about a proposal in the US that would have created 11-meter censorship zones around abortion clinics, and how even such a small distance was struck down at once by the then pro-choice Supreme Court, and that even left-leaning Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg held it to be in violation of the first amendment.

Canadian pro-lifers have many areas of censorship to fight, including “bubble zones” around places that commit abortion and the bans that are being passed by cities against abortion victim photography.

Deregulation

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The next pro-life battleline that Dr. Miller addressed was the worrying trend of deregulation, where medical professionals are more and more removed from the process of abortion. Abortion activists have been pushing for greater access to abortion by means of chemical abortion pills, where the doctor never sees the woman. “Abortion pills [are] being taken without the woman ever seeing any healthcare professional, at all, in person,” he said.

Dr. Miller went on to list the implications of this kind of deregulation and the potential harms to women that go along with it. In this deregulated form of abortion, the woman can call the abortion provider, have the pills sent to her, and she commits the abortion alone, by herself.

In Canada, chemical abortion was approved for use in 2017 with various restrictions. Provinces, such as Quebec, have recently moved to deregulate chemical abortion by no longer requiring women who are seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound before taking the abortion pill.

Dr. Miller went on to address deregulation as it relates to the problem of women trapped in abusive situations.  “Abortion clinics are one of the most common places that women who are subject to human trafficking visit,” he said. He pointed out that abortion centres have claimed in the past that they provide women with confidential counselling to find out if the woman is in an abusive situation and if she really wants to go through with the abortion. In telemedicine abortion, however, there is absolutely no way to find out if she is being coerced; thus, a critical attempted safeguard is removed.

The second problem with the deregulation of chemical abortion has to do with ectopic pregnancies. A woman might have an undetected ectopic pregnancy, take abortion pills expecting them to work, and then have massive haemorrhaging due to the ectopic pregnancy mistaken for the symptoms of the abortion pills. “Having a medical abortion and having a ruptured ectopic pregnancy have the same core symptoms, pain and bleeding,” said Dr. Miller. Again, this puts at risk the health and safety, or even life of the woman.

He brought up the issue of women who take the abortion pill while not being aware of how far along in the pregnancy they are. “40 percent of women estimate their pregnancy gestation incorrectly,” he said. He said that in the UK context, after the introduction of telemedicine abortion, women and girls are “giving birth to third-trimester babies at home at 30 weeks or so on their own with no medical supervision after taking abortion pills. In one case a murder investigation had to be started because the baby was born alive and subsequently passed away.” Deregulation, which has taken away the ultrasound and a physical examination is thus putting women at risk both physically, and legally.

Dr. Miller said that “examination used to be required by the WHO [World Health Organization].” He pointed out that without a physical examination and an in person visit with a medical professional, women who don’t know they have twins or triplets, or have anaemia, STIs, and other complications, could be put at risk with deregulated chemical abortions. In the end, he made the case that everyone ought to be truly concerned about the safety implications of abortion deregulation.

Global

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Dr. Miller’s final point in sketching the current battle lines in the war to defend the preborn is that the battle is being fought on a global scale. He pointed out that while on a global scale, pro-lifers are “the majority of people in this world,” there is a movement afoot from secular governments and organizations to infiltrate pro-life countries and make them pro-abortion. He brought up the example of how Ireland recently and suddenly changed from being a pro-life nation to a pro-abortion nation.

“We know just how quickly attitudes can change. In 2013, only 35 percent of people in Ireland supported abortion on demand. But, just five years later, in 2018 — five years later! — 66 percent of people in Ireland voted to legalize abortion on demand, including 85 percent of young people. That is an incredible change in just five years,” he said.

“And this change is coming to every country in the world in the next five to ten years unless there is serious support for our pro-life brothers and sisters overseas,” he added, noting how pro-life Africa is now the target for abortion activists. With 90% of Africa being pro-life, he said that it is no wonder that there is so much funding for abortion advocacy on this continent.

He called the funding going to international abortion advocacy doubly tragic because “neocolonial pressure to introduce abortion doesn’t just mean that hundreds of thousands, millions of women and children in Africa will be harmed and killed, it also means that every resource that is spent on abortion means that someone somewhere else is missing out.” He cited statistics to support his claim, and demonstrated that this money could be spent helpfully elsewhere. An example he gave is that “pregnant women, mothers, are dying in Africa because they do not have basic obstetric care … because that money is being spent on family planning and abortion.”

Dr. Miller, as his address approached its end, emphasised that “the future of abortion is censorship, the future of abortion is deregulated, and the future of abortion is global.” He then listed some recent victories including a successful court case for pro-life free speech, the success of abortion pill reversal procedures, and recent resistance to abortion enshrinement in Chile.

Something emphasised throughout the entire speech was that these issues are not only the concern of pro-life advocates. He made the case that Liberals and pro-choice activists ought also to defend, and some do, the right of pro-life advocates to exercise their free speech and inform and offer support to vulnerable women. He made a strong case that the danger of deregulated medical abortion ought to be a concern for everyone. And, finally, on the global level, he challenged the abortion movement that if it “really cared about saving women’s lives and about women’s health care” in the developing world, as it claims, it would focus more on “basic” care and less on providing abortion.

He emphasised throughout his address that although the future of pro-life advocacy contains many challenges, there are also opportunities for cooperation with people who are genuinely concerned for the interest of women, but who are not necessarily ‘pro-life,’ to the benefit of vulnerable individuals around the world.