9 December 2014 The Honourable Brian Gallant, Premier of New Brunswick P. O. Box 6000 Fredericton, NB E3B 5H1 Dear Mr Gallant, I am writing to urge you to reconsider your decision to repeal restrictions on abortion access in our province, for the following reasons: Individual rights and accountability to the public good. Removal of the ‘medically necessary’ condition elevates personal rights to the point where the individual becomes answerable only to him/herself in the act of taking human life. Even if one is convinced that in the end women must be free to have abortions, it does not follow that this change in policy is good, or best. The impoverishment of society. The removal of the ‘medically necessary’ condition further opens the door to choices based on an unwillingness to welcome into the world people with mental or physical handicaps. More remotely, it may open the door to selection based on sex or race, or on secondary or tertiary characteristics of the unborn, determined by analysis of genes. Our society is impoverished to the extent that we fail to learn to welcome people who face challenges and challenge us in important ways. Only on a deeply impoverished account of the common good can this be regarded as an essentially ‘private’ matter and not the concern of civil government. Ill effects on women. It is often pointed out that to increase the Province’s capacity to take the lives of the unborn and to improve ‘timeliness of access’ to this procedure will make it easier for women to procure abortions. No doubt this is true, but there is another important aspect to this. It will also make it easier for men and for families to pressure
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pregnant women into doing what they do not wish to do, or to make decisions that often have profound and long‐lasting consequences they have not envisioned without adequate time and opportunity to explore possible consequences and alternatives. What may be welcomed with relief as a way out or in exceptional cases even as a convenience may bring with it a bitter harvest. The research is there to show that it often does. The new life that is lost. We have said nothing about the foetus. The consequences of abortion for this new life are clear. The issue of abortion is much more than a matter of individual rights; it bears on our ability to recognize, respect, and honour our shared humanity wherever it is found. It is my view that societies and civilizations are better as they cultivate these abilities, and worse as they fail to do so. One need not be Christian or even religious at all to agree. People of many different religions or none at all can and do say that these abilities are of central importance to our life together in civil society. The past century is filled with examples of struggles to convince people to broaden their power to recognize one another’s essential humanity, and wars to stop people who refused to recognize others as human and deserving of respect. Indifference to the mistreatment of human life threatens a key foundation stone in our common life. I will be glad to discuss this with you further. There are always possibilities to draw people together on many sides of these questions to give practical assistance to women in crisis who want to keep their child. In closing, I want to assure you of my daily prayers as you lead our province. Sincerely yours, David Edwards
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