Long-time voice for pro-life doctors speaks through wife’s biography

A solitary protester bearing a seven-foot-tall sign and leaning on a cane outside Vancouver’s first abortion clinic painted a stark picture in 1988. 

Dr. Brian Frazer, who practised medicine for over 30 years in South Africa, Canada, and England, would regularly pace outside the clinic, putting a face on doctors who disagreed with abortion and displaying his own convictions about the value of mother and child.

Anyone paying attention to the abortion debate in Vancouver at the time might have already been familiar with his name or perhaps his voice. Frazer appeared on Canadian radio many times and welcomed open, public debate, often at great personal cost.

Now a new self-published biography by his wife reveals previously unknown details about the late doctor’s life and the driving force behind his lifetime of activism.

“I tried to get the feeling of all that he went through,” author Madeline Miller told The B.C. Catholic, describing her late husband as “the voice that would not be silenced” – the title of the book. The subtitle is “One doctor’s passionate zeal to defend life,” something Dr. Frazer never compromised on. “He went through a lot and he never, never stopped,” said Madeline.

Dr. Frazer felt called to medicine before the age of 12 due to the witness of his mother, an Irish midwife in rural South Africa in the 1930s. Miller recounts the story of the day Frazer’s mother delivered a baby while he waited for her in the car. The midwife brought out a beautiful child with a headful of dark curly hair and exclaimed, “Glory be to God! Will you look at this wondrous creation!”

Frazer told his mother then and there he intended to become a midwife too. She replied that the profession was reserved for women, but he was welcome to become a doctor. And so he did. He read all medical literature he could get his hands on at home, and by age 16 he was off to medical school, becoming a doctor and surgeon by age 22.

“It was a wonderful calling for him and he really loved it,” Miller said.

But when abortion laws began to change as Frazer was trying to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology, doors began closing.

“He knew he constantly walked a tightrope,” she writes in the book. “He had not yet ‘arrived’ in his specialty training and could be vulnerable any time. There were divisions among doctors and he knew he had to adhere to his principles mainly alone.”

Frazer’s outright refusal to perform abortions and his firm belief that there was no medical reason for abortion led to rejections from many senior job postings. He often applied for work, was ostracized, and ended up moving with his wife and three children to find employment. He was once told by hospital administration that they looked forward to getting rid of him after his one- year contract was up.

He graduated with a specialization in obstetrics and gynecology in England in 1975, but after a year of working to complete the Canadian equivalent was barred from taking the final exam. Miller described it as “career killer.” Faced with the ultimate rejection, Frazer was forced to open a private practice, which he only managed to keep open for a few months.

Through it all, the doctor maintained that there was no medical reason to perform abortion.

“According to my observations… I have not unequivocally seen or heard of a case that abortion had to be done to save a woman’s life,” he told former Minister of Health and radio show host Rafe Mair during a radio broadcast in 1981.

Frazer took many interviews on Canadian radio (several with Mair) challenging any doctor who performed abortions to call in and describe a medical situation in which an abortion would be necessary. On one occasion, the lines were open for three hours. No one took him up on his invitation.

He described his efforts to challenge abortion as a “crusade.” When the first abortion clinic in Vancouver opened in 1988, he attached a sign reading “Doctors Against Abortion” to the longest pole he could find and took it to the streets.

He protested this way until the very day he died, suffering a heart attack while stopped at a red light on his drive home from the clinic in 1989.

After working on her husband’s biography for several years and facing setbacks in obtaining permission to publish some of his radio interviews, Miller finally released The Voice that Would Not be Silenced: One Doctor’s Passionate Zeal to defend Life” this year. The book includes transcripts of two radio interviews with Mair, including the three-hour conversation during which no pro-abortion doctor called in to challenge him.

“I think every answer to abortion is in that radio program,” said Miller. “The questions that came up and the answers, everything about abortion really, I think, came up in those two programs.”

Her book was published on the heels of the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision in the U.S. The book “is still relevant because abortions are still going on,” said Miller.

“I hope everybody that reads it will get some blessing and some benefit from it. And of course I hope it will stop abortion. I hope that anyone who is about to do an abortion and reads it will change their mind.”

The biography also describes intimate details about Frazer, including his struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and the heart condition that necessitated he bring a chair when he was out protesting. It also shares vivid images and captivating stories about life in South Africa and the challenges of family life, pursing a vocation, moving internationally, and again and again starting from scratch.

Although assisted suicide was far from legal in Canada in Frazer’s time, he expressed fear in his 1980s radio interviews that the arguments used to support abortion would eventually be used to justify the deaths of the elderly or ill.

The Voice that Would Not be Silenced is $23 (including shipping) and can be ordered by emailing [email protected].

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