I do believe that gestational limits offer little protection for the unborn because they are often accompanied by either a loosely interpreted "life and health" exception that renders abortion legal. Look at the situation in South Korea. Abortion is technically illegal, but women get them on that basis.
If the purpose of pro-life lobbying is to obtain an effective law on abortion, then a gestational limit is not the best way to go.
That being said, right now, in Canada, any passing any abortion law would be a good thing because it would set a precedent that there can be an abortion law.
As it stands, pro-lifers are up against the mentality that abortion cannot be legislated in any way whatsoever.
So passing any law would eradicate that belief.
But rather than focus on the gestational limits, we should focus on the means of abortion.
If I were a legislator, I would target two types of abortion.
One would be intracardiac feticide. I think Canadians would be disgusted to learn that babies are killed by an injection of potassium chloride to the heart-- sometimes without benefit of anesthetic. Potassium chloride injections are how death row inmates are killed in the United States, by the way.
Lethal injections to the heart have a hundred percent death rate.
If the injection is made to the umbilical cord (the other typical site of injection) the death rate is 87-95%.
If ten per cent of babies survive the injection, that might give them a chance. If Parliament passes a Born Alive Infants Act, then a handful of children could survive.
The other type of abortion we should target is D & E`s, which are typically done in the second trimester.
I believe that if Canadians knew how these abortions were done, they would be scandalized. I would like to see abortionists summoned to a Parliamentary Committee and testify about their methods of dismembering children. This would be an eye-opening experience for the public.
If D & E's were banned, that would cut into the business of at least some abortion clinics in Canada. It is true that second trimester abortions could be performed using prostaglandins, and the abortion literature is focusing more and more on this method as it does not require any surgical skill. It does however require the woman to go into labour and the abortion is set up like a delivery. It's not something you could easily do through a clinic.
The advantage of legislation that focuses on abortion methods is that it would provide an opportunity to show the horror of abortion, while humanizing the unborn child in the minds of the public. Laws on gestational limits don't require a lot of talk about how abortions are done: you either agree a baby shouldn't be killed past a certain date, or you don't.
