Cashing In On Abortion

It’s a little late, but here is my post on the 20th anniversary of the R v. MORGENTALER ruling.-Matthew

This past weekend, I posted a blog entry on the column that the National Post printed on Saturday featuring Ryerson University professor Judy Rebick, a woman whose current job title I found out is strikingly Orwellian: the Canadian Auto Workers–Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy.

Needless to say, my challenge to all that would take it on to move beyond the respective three or four talking points that each side has trudged out over the past 20 years was well met and I was both pleasantly surprised and very grateful to those who posted their constructive responses. It demonstrated to me that at least some people out there are honest when they say that abortion to them is an undesirable procedure and that society should be looking for a solution that benefits both mothers and children (I would also add fathers personally) alike. This was truly the type of debate that our society should have been having back in 1988 when the ruling came down from the SCC.

Moving onto what to do with this problem, it was suggested here in the comments that pro-lifers should pursue an agenda of getting the government to fund the needs of mothers who wish to carry their babies to term but are financially restricted. It’s a valid argument coming from the social democrat side of Canada’s political spectrum and I welcome any pro-life liberals who wish to pursue this further. I personally find the cause to be noble, like many ideas on the left, however I did take some time to reflect upon it during the past few days and cannot help but be reminded of the words of Mark Steyn in his now-infamous book, America Alone. Steyn made a point early on in the book that even if Bill Gates offered to pay for all the social services in the U.S., he would still oppose subsidies as he believes they make people dependents and society unable to reach its fullest potential. In fact, he goes further and states that there is an inherent danger to such programs in that allows people to ignore the real cost of whatever is being provided, while also bringing them to believe that such benefits are entitlements. Now, I’ve met my share of mothers over the years and I know that a good majority of them would never want to raise their children in such an environment. Still, there is a large, but harmful minority out there for any given government silo full of grain.

This leads me to rely on the largely ignored competent of a successful libertarian society: such a society must be built upon community. It seems that we have confused community and government these days, but there are vastly different and that difference is crucially important to understand. If a single-parent family is just a faceless number, there would be no accountability aside from across-the-board standards that the government bureaucracy sets up. If instead, a church or local organization like Birthright or the United Way were to set up a program to assist single mothers in becoming self-sufficient as they raise their children, then we have a humanizing aspect that both keeps a watchful eye on any abusive recipients while also allowing for additional funding or leniency for those families with special needs.

Either way though, whether through the government or organizations, I feel that the idea of stepping up to the plate and providing the money for these women who go through the difficult situation of single-handedly raising their children is long overdue. To my pro-life colleagues, perhaps rising to the occasion on this matter would be a better effort to focus our attention on in the next 20 years than our efforts of the past 20, although ultimately finding new ways of eliminating any proclaimed need for abortion would help us even further to bridging the gap between the respect for all human life and society’s acknowledgment of this respect.