Abortion on demand: empowerment -- or bamboozlement -- of women?

Once again, Barabra KAY is bang on in her June 10 article "The abortion issue we're ignoring", in highlighting growing research about the medical risks surrounding induced abortion.

Consider:

• Approximately 100,000 induced abortions (IA) are performed annually in Canada (30 per 100 live births), about a million in the U. S. - a significant percentage of them repeats (46% in the U.S.)
• Extreme Preterm Births (XPT) under 28 weeks are 10 times as likely as fullterm to be diagnosed with autism, cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
• Women who have had an IA had 1) 34% higher relative odds of a Very Preterm (VPT) birth compared to women with no prior IAs; and 2) Women with more than one prior IA had an 82% higher relative odds of a VPT birth.
• In a Journal of Reproductive Medicine report, Dr. Byron Calhoun et al estimated there were 1,096 annual excess cases of Cerebral Palsy in U. S. newborns under 3.5 lbs directly traced to a prior IA "that has never been challenged by a letter to the editor". (Mrs. KAY concludes that based on 10-1 population ratio, a similar number of damaged children in Canada would be 100)

Mrs. KAY then asks the next obvious questions.

I were the mother of a post-IA, PTB infant or toddler with autism or cerebral palsy, and had not been informed as a matter of regulatory course of IA's risk for a future PTB, I'd be angry.

As an "ice-breaker", we might also ask why, uniquely amongst surgical interventions, suction abortion -- the most common method in use by abortion clinics -- has never been animal-tested, a clear violation of the Nuremberg Code for research ethics in human experimentation.

These are issues that effect men who wish to be "fathers by choice" as they are often told they are imposing their will on women, and that she has control of her body (but perhaps not enough self-control to use birth control) . Yet there is a double standard when a women wishes to have a child and wants more than a willing sperm donor. Men typically are not given a choice to parent then, but just the "opportunity" to pay child support - enforced by MEP.