[Abortion]
https://archives.anglican.ca/link/official5124
- Date
- 1972 November 10
- Source
- Anglican News Service
- Type
- Press Release
- Text of motion
- Toronto hospitals are performing abortions "without restriction," according to a prominent official of the Anglican Church of Canada.
- Rev. Arthur Brown, rector of a large Toronto parish and a member of the National Executive Council of General Synod made the charge in connection with deliberations on a forthcoming report by a Task Force on Human Life.
- The report is not expected to be completed until the end of 1973 and Father Brown said he and other pastors are impatiently awaiting it for guidance on new and complex moral situations.
- He told bishops and other delegates from across Canada to the executive council that "all kinds of girls are going through our hospitals in metropolitan Toronto being aborted of pregnancies." His information, he said, comes from nurses and other hospital staff.
- Father Brown claimed that staffs in some Toronto hospitals are aborting without restriction "under the guise of it being good for the total health of the mother."
- Five years ago, he said, one Toronto hospital listed 28 abortions. Last year, the number was over 300, "ten times as many, or more."
- He said "doctors are compromised by the destruction of human life" in this abortion situation. On becoming doctors, he said, they swear an oath to preserve life but due to the present situation "they are placed in a major compromised situation."
- Father Brown said nursing staffs are upset over having to clean up after induced miscarriages and they come to him for guidance.
- Archbishop E.W. Scott, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada expressed deep sympathy towards the position described by Father Brown but said the task force's report will take another year due to the complexities of the issues involved.
- "It's becoming obvious that people are feeling a need for help in making decisions in these areas," Archbishop Scott said.
- "Each case has to be evaluated in terms of the health of the mother and the possible health of the child, and not only on the question of the sanctity of life but also in the area of the quality of life."
- Archbishop Scott emphasized that hospital boards deciding abortion cases should include persons representing moral issues as well as medical issues.
- Besides abortion, the task force is studying the whole concept of when life begins and ends in relation to euthanasia, transplants, biological engineering and the vast implications of discoveries in biochemistry. Archbishop Scott said the study has become increasingly complex as it delves into the legal, medical, moral and social aspects of life. The task force is composed of lawyers, doctors, research scientists, housewives, social workers, theologians and others. It is also consulting with similarly concerned groups in the United States, Britain and other parts of the world.
- A progress report will be presented to the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada at its biennial meeting next May in Regina.
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- For further information, contact:
- Michael O'Meara
- Director, Communications Division
- 924-9192 (Business)
- 742-8327 (Residence)
- Subjects
- Abortion - Canada
- Abortion - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Anglican Church of Canada. Task Force on Human Life
- Bioethics - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Medical ethics - Canada
- Chaplains, Hospital - Anglican Church of Canada
- Brown, Arthur D. (Arthur Durrant), 1926-2011