Some final responses to Dr. Waugh
CMAJ 1997;156:1529
Re: "Abortion and our changing society" (CMAJ 1997;156:408) by Dr. Douglas Waugh
Dr. Waugh's reflections demonstrate an unholy faith that recent attitudinal changes represent progress instead of mere drift.
That "abortion services" are liberally advertised in his Yellow Pages hardly merits applause. Gratifyingly, my Yellow Pages contain 3 listings for local "abortion alternatives" and only 2 for Toronto-based abortion clinics.
By his minimization of the overwhelming cost in human lives (in that there is a "levelling off" of the abortion rate at "only" 15.5 abortions per 1000 fertile women per year in Canada) on the one hand, and by his description of the prolife resistance forces as "attenuated" on the other, Waugh seems to have deluded himself into complacency.
The fact is that new abortionists are now difficult to recruit countrywide from among "more-or-less respectable" physicians. Within various North American jurisdictions, serious political consideration given to delisting abortion services is yet another indication that tolerance for abortion on demand, as an acceptable form of birth control, is dissipating.
Most ironic in the weave of Waugh's article is the Churchill "mills of justice" quote, which is clearly derived from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Though the mills of God
grind slowly
yet they grind exceeding small.
Though with patience
He stands wanting,
with exactness grinds He all.
[Bartlett's Familiar Quotations states that Longfellow had merely translated Friedrich von Logau's work. -- Ed.]
The contrast with wanton democratic processes is vivid. Instead of continuing to view the preborn as inconvenient protoplasmic bits rather than human beings, albeit disenfranchised within the prochoice paradigm, and instead of considering the status quo as the fine point of progressive evolution, Waugh would be wiser to heed Bob Dylan's advice to "not speak too soon cause the wheel's still in spin."
James D.F. Harris, MD
London, Ont.
Dr. Waugh planned to respond to this letter but was unable to do so before his death on Apr. 18, 1997. In this issue, CMAJ features a tribute to Waugh (page 1524) as well as an article on issues surrounding access to abortion services (page 1545). -- Ed.
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