As a member of the Alberta Medical Association, [AMA] Canada, I am saddened by the President’s Letter of 24 June 2022. Dr. Warren makes inflammatory comments about the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the USA, scaremongering its consequences.
The whole letter is appended below so that there is no question of inappropriate quotation or paraphrasing.
Even the title of the letter accuses the decision of being an “attack on women’s right to health.”
Dr. Warren’s letter consists only of emotive and erroneous comments about this very serious issue. She provides no objective analysis of the SCOTUS decision; no proper analysis of the varied legal and societal ramifications for individual States and definitely no objective support for the hyperbolic claims such as: “horrifying spectre of serious morbidity and mortality for the many who will now be unable to safely terminate a pregnancy.” (SCOTUS: Supreme Court of the US.)
Dr. Warren used the term “we” so presumably her comments mirror the sentiment of the Executive and the Board of the AMA. (She may indeed mirror the opinion of the majority of members, though, there has been no poll on the matter recently.) That said, as physicians and surgeons, we should present some objective proof for our comments.
For background, the legal situation in Canada is quite unique, and very different to the US. The Canadian legislation on abortion was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988 and was never replaced (though was meant to be.) This means that Canada is one of the few developed countries in the world without any criminal law or legal restrictions on abortion.
In the US Bill Clinton pushed for abortion during his 1992 campaign to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Many of us who oppose abortion have immense sympathy for the tragic (< 1%) cases arising out of rape, incest, trafficking etc. This American TikTokker says it well:
The vast majority of biologists believe life starts at conception. On that basis, over 60 million human beings have been killed through abortion in America since Roe. Abortion is never safe for the human in the womb.
In the US, there is a much higher proportion of African-Americans being aborted relative to their total population. This is in keeping with the clearly-stated plan of eugenics from the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger. History will not be kind to this extermination.
Maternal Mortality.
As noted by Dr. Warren, a major indicator of maternal health is the Maternal Mortality Rate [MMR]. The legalization of Abortion actually had very little to do with the amazing reductions in Maternal Mortality from advances in the Twentieth century. (Graph from the CDC.)
The same graph with the year of Roe v Wade appended.
Information from the Lancet shows that the US MMR actually rose between 1990 and 2015 in comparison to other developed countries. (Obviously it would be disingenuous to suggest that Roe was the cause, but this does not support the argument that abortion was reducing MMR in the US!)
We hear the dehumanizing descriptions of the fetus as being a “parasite” or “clump of cells.”
Pro-Aborts also strenuously deny the idea that a fetus is a “person” or a “citizen.” A recent review in the Harvard Law journal supports the concept that the unborn in America are indeed “persons” under the Fourteenth Amendment. Naturally, this requires a further decision from SCOTUS.
The elephant in the room.
I challenge Dr. Warren to state any medical condition which requires the killing of the baby in-utero before delivery of the dead body, as against the delivery of that child still alive. (Or naturally providing a specific treatment for the condition, such as antibiotics for infection.)
Roe had little to do with ‘health.’ (Indeed, the original SCOTUS decision was based in women’s “privacy” rights.)
The abortion movement is about the choice of killing one’s own unborn child — legally.
Dr. Kevin Hay