Abortions take emotional toll
I am responding to your article “Inside the Morgentaler Clinic” by Sarah Mayes (Dec. 5 ).
In the article, Joan Wright, the clinic manager, explains the complications of an abortion, as “rare” and the pain comparable to “menstrual like cramps”. Apart from the physical pain that my girlfriend went through, the emotional pain, which we never anticipated, was devastating to both of us.
I was climbing the ladder of success in New York. I had been on Broadway, the US national tour of Cats, and co-starring in films for Columbia and Paramount Pictures.
My girlfriend was a doctor and a professional dancer with a well-known dance troupe.
One night she told me she was pregnant.
We agreed that it was an inconvenient time to have a baby because we were “building our careers.”
We aborted the baby.
Although my girlfriend wanted the abortion also, the moment she was on the operating table and the doctor was using the suction machine (which your article said “everybody gets morbidly curious about”) to remove the parts of our baby, she had a powerful urge to say “put that back!”
None of her medical training, or her glamorous successes in dancing, could explain away the emptiness she experienced afterward.
Devastation swallowed me also. To this day, there is no greater mistake either of us has ever made.
The article compares an unwanted pregnancy to a breast lump.
I think there is a difference: the breast lump grows into death, the unwanted pregnancy sucks its thumb.
David MacDonald,
Bronson Avenue
Somerset bridge a waste of money
Re : “Social service providers to fight cuts” (Dec. 5)
I cannot believe that social services in this city have to fight for every cent they get (which doesn’t even come close to the money needed) to properly service the homeless, the poor and the disadvantaged in this city and yet our newly elected councillor Diane Holmes, is still pushing for a $4.8 million pedestrian bridge across the Rideau Canal at Somerset Street despite the $120 million shortfall in the city’s budget.
Does she and the special interest groups she serves not realize this proposed bridge is just 300m from the newly renovated Laurier Avenue Bridge?
Does she not realize the Laurier Avenue Bridge was expanded and bicycle lanes added to serve the same purpose as the proposed pedestrian bridge over the canal?
Surely this proposed bridge is nothing more than a luxury for the special interest groups that have lobbied long and hard for it. It serves no practical purpose.
Connect Centretown to Sandy Hill? What do they think the Laurier Avenue Bridge does?
For the sake of saving 300 metres of walking, these special interest groups would rather spend $4.8 million on a pedestrian bridge than divert that money to reduce the debt or feed the hungry and house the homeless?
Unfortunately, the only people who will ever use this multi-million dollar white elephant will be the homeless . . . who will be sleeping under it!
Ron Bos,
Lewis Street