Sarah Ivany

My local newspaper, The Calgary Herald, ran this editorial by Susan Martinuk about abortion in the wake of Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s death:

I felt compelled to respond. Here’s a copy of the response I sent to the Herald:

“This moral indifference to the humanity of the unborn is now so entrenched in our society, that we are now extending it to the newly born. Thank you, Henry Morgentaler.”

It amazes me that Martinuk so easily paints the women in these tragic anecdotes (which themselves represent a tiny fraction of very extreme incidences related to unintended pregnancies) with the same brush—as morally indifferent perpetrators of horrific violence. Yet she manages to turn a blind eye to the violence of being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term that is inflicted on women every day, both those women in her anecdotes and millions of others worldwide (whether through laws explicitly banning abortion, or because layer upon layer of restrictions—tabled and enacted primarily by men—have rendered abortion a financial and practical impossibility for many women).