My name is Friday--I'm a cop

My earliest memories of television programs include Captain Kangaroo, The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason, the Mickey Mouse Club, Davey Crockett and, last but hardly least, the police drama Dragnet. I trace my near obsession with mystery novels back to that last-named show.

The hero of Dragnet was a detective sergeant named Joe Friday, who always introduced himself with, "My name is Friday--I'm a cop." Sergeant Friday is also famous for another saying that never really passed his lips--"Just the facts, Ma'am." He actually uttered the somewhat more pedestrian "All we want are the facts." But like Sherlock Holmes with his stereotypical (but never really stated) "Elementary, my dear Watson", "Just the facts, Ma'am" will always be associated with my childhood police hero.

As I have become more involved in the pro-life vs pro-abortion scene, I have been struck by the need for a Joe Friday-type character to grab the players by the throat and insist on just the facts. What I have encountered is a good deal of rhetoric, sweeping generalizations, unexamined premises, political correctness and incorrectness, ideology, painting of oneself into a corner--almost everything except for an objective, scientifically rigorous examination of all the relevant facts and the compelling arguments that should come from them.

I can already hear your objections: "What do you mean, we ignore the facts!", followed by emails listing pages of information, references, and conclusions. I'm not suggesting that certain medical, historical, legal, political and other types of information are lacking. But as a layperson in this field, reacting in a "person on the street" way, I find that the key arguments tend to be more ideological than factual, with facts used as a battering ram to buttress preferred points of view (what in biblical interpretation circles we call proof-texting).

Perhaps I had better give a few examples. I received a most interesting email message recently from an American doctor, who is also involved with a secular pro-life medical group, describing the life vs abortion debate in his country. He told me in part,

"On a professional level we are aware that the long-term complications of abortion on the woman are often very devastating. And this is bad medicine--particularly because these women get practically no benefit from 'informed consent'. For starters, in the American system, there is practically no record of who got an abortion, so there is no practical way to link later complications...We get a lot of good information from Europe's socialized records system, but our medical people basically ignore it, since the results are politically incorrect." Compare this with a statement I read on the website of an organization that calls itself pro-choice but which provides abortions, "Abortion does not interfere with your future fertility." Somebody is either lying or is badly misinformed.

I see billboards proclaiming the clear link between induced abortion and a greater likelihood of breast cancer. I hear an equally strong denunciation of this alleged link by cancer agencies and other groups. Either there is a medical argument for it or there is not. Like so many other positions taken (e.g., living under hydro wires), people line up on both sides. If the alleged link is true, or quite possibly true, then this is very serious and should be part of any young woman's education. If it is not true, or most probably not true, then demonstrate that fact. But we have pro-life people saying that it is an established fact, and others who favour a pro-abortion position saying that it is not. The pro-choice people, who should want this allegation clarified if they really want women to have all the information necessary to make a fully informed choice, simply state the position of one side (the naysayers).

The politicians are the worst. I can remember as if it were yesterday former New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent laying out his party's principles in a speech to the faithful. Some of the biggest cheers were reserved for his statement, "Every child a wanted child."

[The statement made me think of other leaders who took similar positions with groups of individuals currently out of favour: e.g., Adolph Hitler, "Every Jew a wanted Jew". Since they weren't wanted, they were killed off as non-persons. Or former Governor of Alabama George Wallace, who ran on a pro-segregation platform in the 1960s, "Every black a wanted black" (except that Wallace didn't call them blacks). But I digress.]

Is there any way to measure wanted-ness? Wanted when?--when the woman first knew she was pregnant? How she felt six months in? How she felt today vs yesterday? Is there any evidence to show that wanted-ness makes any long-term difference in the well-being of a child? Was Einstein wanted? Martin Luther King Jr.? Me? What would one say if the mother of Idi Amin or Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin said that she really, really wanted that baby? Ed didn't linger on these matters. What he was really saying, of course, was "Every pregnancy a convenient pregnancy", but that doesn't make for good campaign rhetoric.

One of the worst arguments of all (I say worst because it sounds so plausible on the surface) goes something like this: "Whether to have an abortion is a very personal matter that should be decided between a woman and her doctor." What do we know about a doctor's knowledge of fetal development? We hear time and again from women who have had abortions and then regretted it that the doctor told her that she wasn't carrying anything other than a mass of cells.

A mass of cells?

Before the mother could even know that she is pregnant, that mass of cells already has the foundations of the brain, spinal cord and nervous system. On day 21 the heart starts beating. By four weeks the backbone and muscles are forming and the arms, legs, eyes and ears have begun to show. By the time week five rolls around and the mother is beginning to wonder if she might be pregnant, five fingers can be discerned in the hand, and in week six, when she might be told that she is carrying a mere mass of cells, brain waves can be detected. At the end of eight weeks, when the woman might be scheduled for surgery, the fetus' heart has been beating for more than a month, the stomach produces digestive juices and the kidneys have begun to function.

The medical community is in agreement that life begins at conception. The issue now is not whether the fetus represents life, or even that it is human life, but whether it is a person. The "mass of cells" argument is meaningless. What the mother should be told is, "If you have an abortion, you are ending a life. What you have to decide is whether you are killing a person or not."

The people who grieve me the most are the ones who delight in calling themselves pro-choice. I have never met a group who talked about being for choice more while encouraging it less. Our western liberal democratic societies view choice as one of our foundational pillars. We encourage people to inform themselves fully, whether it is to vote, purchase, choose where to live or go to school, etc., etc., etc. But on the life vs abortion issue, full information is squelched.

There is a member of Canada's Bloc Quebecois party, for instance, who often speaks during question period. She is a big lady with a florid complexion who argues in various degree of loud. I watched her once lambaste the Minister of Heritage of the day because she allowed funding for a women's organization called REAL Women, her objection being that they are pro-life (the L in REAL stand for 'for life').

Shouldn't funding all sides of an issue be a good thing? Her own political party argued long and loud for representation in the leaders' debates at election time to ensure that Canadians know what they stand for. Why is life vs abortion different?

Joe Friday would never put up with this fuzzy-headed argumentation. Neither should we. Those who are pro-life must be sure to give compelling arguments based on a rigorous evaluation of the facts... and to ask the same of all opponents. So should those who like to call themselves pro-choice. Nothing but the facts, Ma'am.