About officials and others reportedly boasting about their PR strategy, and about the fact that, as far as I can tell, most of the folks who wrote or phoned or emailed have been ignored…

I’m sorry: What else were you expecting? Protests and letters and phone calls and columns and what have you will not make one bit of difference – at least not officially. The people who are convinced Henry Morgentaler deserves the Order of Canada and who are in a position to make it happen already know what you think. And they don’t care. If anything, the sight of protests and the accumulation of letters is somewhat pleasant to them – gives them the impression they are being courageous. (I know. It is silly.)

So then… what? Same as what we were doing before this whole business came up. For my part, this means writing and talking and discussing the issue, hoping to convince women at least to think twice before having an abortion. Think about what abortion is, what it does to your body (to say nothing of what it does to that other body inside yours) and please avoid it – both for your sake and that of the little innocent being trapped inside you through no fault of his or her own. Not getting pregnant in the first place helps a lot. Understanding your body, how it works and what is likely to happen when you keep having unprotected sex helps keep Plan A on track. It’s not rocket science.

I am not discouraged – by the boasts, or opinion polls, or anything else. To me, doing anything that might help reduce the number of casual abortions is what matters. If I manage to convince one young woman that avoiding abortion is at least as important as making sure she’s ready to have kids before getting pregnant, it will have been worth it.

p.s. well, OK, some poll results are discouranging…

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