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Extract The main purpose of this paper is to summarize the legal status of conscientious objectors in the United States. To accomplish it we would briefly state a background of the law of conscientious objection in the United States and then analyze the current factual situation. . . . The registration has been reinstated by the President of the United States recently and, although no draft has been called, it remains a very real possibility, especially since the volunteer army has not proven satisfactory.51 Should Congress abolish the exemption to bear arms, the important question the Court’s would face is whether or not conscientious objection to war, to a particular conflict or to all, is a right recognized and protected by the Constitution of the United States.
Extract The fetus in the uterus of a pregnant woman is not the body of the pregnant woman; it is the body of someone else. I ask Dr. Wilson: If a woman asked him to provide her with the means to end her own life and used the same logic, that it is her own body and she is entitled to do with it what she wants, would he readily agree?
Extract The statement on abortion sponsored by the Canadian Physicians for Life and Les Medecins du Quebec pour le Respect de la Vie (Can Med Assoc J 1981; 125: 922) is an insult to all physicians who support the position of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) on abortion, including physicians who are members of the Canadian Abortions Rights Action League (CARAL). We categorically reject the charge that we “promote the destruction of the unborn”. The use of the epithet proabortion in reference to either the CMA or the prochoice position is one of many examples of deliberate misrepresentation of the facts surrounding abortion. “Proabortion” applies to those who promote abortion, who favour it as a population control measure; such people live chiefly in India and China. Antichoicers do not recognize this crucial distinction between proabortion and prochoice . . .Are antichoicers now prepared to guarantee that the emotional and physical needs of all unwanted children will be met; to ensure that each one is able to make a life out of the existence that antichoicers would force on it? Hardly. They are interested only in “protecting” the fetus until it is too late for an abortion. They feel no responsibility for the aftermath of compulsory pregnancy for either the mother or the offspring. Their interest is in quantity, not quality of life. . . .These prolife physicians endorse the “moral rights of hospital boards” to protect the “unborn” by depriving women of their legal right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. History teaches us that whenever the rights of institutions are allowed to ride roughshod over the rights of individuals, humanity as a whole suffers. No publicly funded hospital in this country has any moral right to deprive the women it serves of their legal right to an induced abortion. . . .As long as our laws make it possible for antichoice groups to impose their notions of reproductive morality on other Canadians in this arbitrary fashion, we should all blush in referring to Canada as a democracy.
Watters WW, Cohen M. (Correspondence) Abortion. Can Med Assoc J. 1982 Mar 01;126(5):465. Available from:
Extract As president of the Toronto Catholic Doctors Guild I must point out a divergence from traditional Roman Catholic teaching alleged to have been promulgated by Father David Roy of the Centre for Bioethics of the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal (Can Med Assoc J 1981; 125: 507, 509). Dorothy Trainor, the author, reported that Father Roy believes that since physical characteristics of “individuation” have been shown by experimental evidence to take place 14 to 21 days after conception he would have no qualms about abortion before that time. Such a view is, of course, entirely contrary to the teaching of our church and would seem to presume that the infusion of soul by God must necessarily await physical “individuation”. . . our behavioural guidelines must not be compromised by the thesis expounded by Father Roy.
Extract Sex is a pleasurable human activity that should be encouraged, not made taboo by old-fashioned minds that seek to give young people guilty consciences they don’t need. If an unwanted fetus is conceived, there is no point in having an unwanted child in the world, so there should be no obstacle such as an abortion committee to delay the operation.
