3 - Friday, January 12, 1990 - North Shore News ae. Bee Tas Fs NEWS photo Cindy Goodman AN 83-YEAR-old North Vancouver man was charged with disobeying a stop sign after a car and a van collided at the intersection of 8th Street and Chesterfield Avenue. Wednesday. According to a North Vancouver RCMP spokesman, the driver of the Buick Regal was travelling west on 8th and allegedly failed to stop at the sign. The Buick struck a Chevy van travelling north on Chesterfield. Friday, cloudy with light tain. Saturday, periods of rain. Lows near 2°C; highs near 10°C. Second Class Registration Number 3885 ABORTION TRUCE After years of confrontation, pro-choice and pro-life forces stop using LGH as political forum THE ABORTION powder keg that threatened to ex- plode at Lions Gate Hospi- tal during the 1980s has been largely defused through a combination of democratic process and conciliation. By TIMOTHY RENSHAW News Reporter Over the past decade confronta- tion has largely evolved into coop- eration: © 1980: In the years immediately following the 1979 pro-life sweep of four available hospital board seats, membership in the North and West Vancouver Hospital Society (NWVHS) increased so dramatically that the annual board elections had to be moved from the hospital’s meeting room to a com- bination of North Vancouver’s Centennial Theatre and the North Vancouver recreation centre ice arena and curling rink. « 1988: The NWVHS approved for the first time in its 30-year his- tory two pro-life-endorsed nominees in its slate of candidates for the annual board elections, and all five available seats were filled by acclamation. Such radical change has not been without substantial cost to the hospital. It has also required a tempering of views at both ends of the abor- tion debate. Past LGH board chairman Jim Warne said the abortion battle at the hospital was largely overcome “because a few key people in the opposing camps on the board of Lions Gate Hospital acted boldly and generously.” Those key people include Hilary Clark, who served nine years on the board, three of those as board chairman; Warne, who also served three, three-year terms on the board; pro-life-sponsored board director Colleen Donald, who resigned from the board last June; and North Shore Pro-Life Society (NSPLS) president Ross Labrie. Though the responsibilities of the 17-member LGH board range from approving hospita! budgets to monitoring hospital staff per- formance, abortion and the hospi- tal’s abortion policy became the single dominating issue of LGH PAST LGH chairman Jim Warne ---most pro-life supported directors earned respect. PAST board chairman Hilary Clark ...pro-life-dominated board would have destroyed LGH. board elections through the 1980s. Of the 17 board members, 12 are elected and five are appointed. Four are elected each year. Elected board members serve three-year terms and can serve a maximum of three consecutive terms. Following the 1979 pro-life sweep of the four available board seats, NWVHS membership almost tripled, jumping from 1,694 to 4,898. Membership from 1981 ranged from 2,420 up to 4,728 (in 1987). According to Warne, the initial impact of pro-life candidates on the board was extremely disruptive and divisive. It also polarized the board into pro-life and pro-choice camps. The pro-life directors elected in 1979, Warne said, continuously raised the abortion issue at board meetings and argued regularly for restrictions on the medical staff and on the hospital’s therapeutic abortion committee. “The board,’’ Warne said, ‘‘was distracted from its usual business of monitoring the quality of health care, and doctors on staff became more guarded about sharing in- formation with board members.”’ Said John Borthwick, who retired as LGH president in 1987 after weathering the full force of the abortion storm at the hospital: “It was really difficult. The board was divided into two camps on every issue. For the first time the board became political.’’ Organizing the annual board elections, he said, suddenly went from being a simple affair involv- ing less than 100 people to complex events involving thousands of voters. The administrative cost to the hospital skyrocketed: approxi- mately $60,000 annually compared with $12,000 per year in years when hospital elections were un- contested. In 1982, pro-life sponsored board directors George Carruthers and Michael Whelton launched legal action against the hospital and individual doctors, claiming that illegal abortions were being performed at LGH. The suit was rejected in various court levels, and in 1985 the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld an earlier B.C. Supreme Court ruling that pré vented the two North Shore res- idents from filing their suit against tii: hospital, the NWVHS and 12 GH doctors. Though the hospital had won in the courts, the financial cost to fight the suit had been significant: close to $100,000. PRO-LIFE sponsored board direc- tor George Carruthers ...Jaunched legal action against LGH and doc- tors claiming illegal abortions per- formed. ¢ NSPLS chairman Ross Labrie «pro-life directors were doing a good job. And polarization of the pro-life and pro-choice factions within the board continued. The forces of pro-choice managed to win all the available hospital board seats from 1980 through to 1984. NWVHS membership dropped from 4,898 in. 1980 to 2,532 in 1984; voter turnout at the annual hospital board elections also began to dwindle, In 1985, however, membership surged back to 3,443, and again a slate of four pro-life-backed can- didates swept the board elections. But Warne said the change in the pro-life directors from 1979 was profound. “The board did not suffer from their presence,”’ he said. *‘Most of the pro-life-supported directors worked as hard as we did on our committees, and earned our respect."’ Colleen Donald, one of the NSPLS-backed directors elected in 1985, said it was evident that the abortion issue had deeply divided the board. ‘The two groups were really po- larized, and there was responsibili- ty for that on both sides,’’ she said. ‘‘One side was as bad as the other.’* Donald preferred to advance pro-life philosophies by establishing what she said were points where the two sides met, rather than where they diverged. She also believed the abortion debate ‘‘did not belong on the hospital doorstep,’’ and realized that the continuing abortion battle was ultimately destructive to both the hospital and the pro-life movement, primarily because it was alienating the medical com- munity. Donald also tried to educate her pro-life colleagues to the reality that the hospital and its board had a broad range of responsibilities, abortion being only a single issue within that range. Prior to the 1985 election, discussions took place between Donald and Hilary Clark over the possibility of the board backing Donald's candidacy as a pro-life director in order to help defuse the abortion issue at the annual hospi- tal elections and cut the ever-in- creasing costs of administrating those elections. But they were unsuccessful in reaching an agreement. Clark said the board’s nominating committee had agreed to back Donald on the condition See Shots Page 5