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STOP BY A BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD (It's in the Breaking News sidebar!)
Posted on 01/18/2003 9:17:46 AM PST by Loyalist
What I expect to see in Dr. Henry Morgentaler's Toronto clinic is a small, homely sort of place like a physiotherapy office in a bad neighbourhood, where the receptionist is still typing on a Selectric and the clientele is a gaggle of depressed patients with bad backs fighting for the one chair with the Obus Forme. I expect grey-faced people with angry signs waving little troll dolls at teenaged patients outside.
My expectations are all wrong. There are no demonstrators outside, thanks to an injunction and a well-chosen location. The clinic is spacious and its rooms designed in a ring, so that patients can be guided first to a counsellor, then for an ultrasound, then a waiting room, an operating room and a recovery room.
All this is separate from a waiting room so large that couples talk to each other rather than whisper, teenage girls can cluster with their friends, boyfriends and girlfriends can clutch at each other, middle-aged couples sit tiredly and a moneyed-looking woman can wait alone and thoughtful, with that mother-of-a-teenager expression on her face, her eyes cool and blank and the teeth slowly grinding. The magazines are up to date, as is the music (unless Dr. Morgentaler is around, and then it's classical).
The clinic exudes warmth and friendliness. The two counsellors are women of great humour and kindness. They say that they and all employees risk physical attack from anti-abortion fanatics.
The range of patients is huge. The day I am there, two 14-year-olds had abortions. Some patients are brought in shackled and guarded and then returned to prison. There are middle-aged, married women accompanied by their husbands. There are Catholics, Muslims and Jews.
The receptionist giggles, the ultrasound lady chats. Dr. Morgentaler, who comes in later, has arranged for a masseuse to come in to treat the staff, gratis. The former nanny of one of his three children works at the clinic.
I watch two abortions, both of them pre-12 weeks. The table looks like a regular gynecologist's examination table, but slightly more elaborate. There are no footrests covered with oven mitts, but padded supports for the thighs. The patients are given a sublingual tranquillizer at counselling, and acetaminophen for cramps.
During the abortion, they are given Fentanyl as a painkiller for the needle that will numb the cervix for clamping and dilation, and are offered laughing gas if they still feel they won't be able to cope with the needle.
One way a Morgentaler clinic abortion differs from a hospital abortion is the fact that another ultrasound takes place during the procedure. It's safer, providing the doctor with a view of the interior of the uterus at any angle.
The first young woman, there with her friends, has discovered to her shock and rage that her boyfriend has been cheating on her. The woman is still radiant with anger at the boyfriend and is anxious to be off for a holiday where she can forget the whole thing. She fears needles intensely, but is relieved after the abortion.
The second abortion involves a 21-year-old patient, a tiny woman who has already had a baby, but gave it up for adoption. The fact that she saw the baby after the birth causes her anguish still. She works two jobs, as does her boyfriend -- he cries a lot, she says, and bought some baby clothes -- and her parents were not aware of either pregnancy. They are busy people and the family is large, she says. She and her boyfriend cannot support a child.
She is distressed, but talks to me, the ultrasound technician and the doctor. She hates the laughing-gas mask but accepts it. There are suction sounds and the clear tube attached to the aspirator fills with blood. "There," the doctor says.
"What? It's over?" she says in astonishment. "That was, like, three minutes. I thought it would be half an hour."
She asks to see the fetus. The doctor carefully explains that she is welcome to look at what was extracted, but that there is no recognizable fetus. It's a dot, she says. And the relief of the woman when she views what is in the tray is overwhelming. Even though she has already carried an infant to term, she honestly believed that a 12-week fetus would look the same, except very small.
She is grateful to the clinic staff because when she asked them why she was given an IV, they explained that she needed one because she hadn't eaten for so long. She couldn't get over the contrast with the large, well-known Toronto hospital where she'd had her baby alone. The nurses and doctors never explained anything, she said, not even what they were injecting her with. She was given an episiotomy and the doctor brought in dozens of male medical students, asked her to spread her legs and showed off his special "median" stitching.
After an hour, the young woman gets dressed. She says that the counsellor was the kindest person she has ever met. And then she is gone.
Joseph Goebbels would beam with pride at her propagandizing abilities.
What they never point out is that he has multiple clinics in multiple provinces, which allows him to bypass each province's spending caps (a doctor cannot be paid more than $x amount of dollars in one year; highly paid doctors like neurosurgeons sometimes work 3 months, then take the rest of the year off as a consequence). Thus he is earning several million per year.
Want to bet that their baby's sperm donor never got arrested for staturatory rape or sexual abuse?
Can't speak about the other charges, but I don't think statutory rape would apply here. Canada's age of consent is 14.
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