Abortion is something so horrible it has to be described with euphemisms: ‘a woman’s right to control her own body’; ‘a woman’s right to control her reproductive choices’. But the most common is ‘a woman’s right to choose’.
Abortion is something so horrible it has to be described with euphemisms: ‘a woman’s right to control her own body’; ‘a woman’s right to control her reproductive choices’. But the most common is ‘a woman’s right to choose’.
The sentence is left incomplete: it is short for ‘a woman’s right to choose between a pregnancy she fears may destroy her financially or professionally, possibly even physically, and the killing of the baby in her womb.’
In other words, many if not most women who have abortions feel they have no choice. Overworked women with low incomes, unsupportive families, unsympathetic employers, no partners and/or existing children to care for may simply be unable to cope with a baby; nursery care in the UK is prohibitively expensive – on average around £50 per child under two per day in London.
Women may find their careers or education derailed by pregnancy. Not to mention the stigma attached to unplanned pregnancy, particularly for teenagers; this may literally be fatal for those whose relatives are of the ‘honour killing’ variety.
A woman-friendly society would readjust itself to support pregnant women and mothers, removing the shame of pregnancy and alleviating the burden of childcare.
And yet contemporary Britain despises fecund low-income women. When Mick and Mairead Philpott were convicted of killing their six children, conservatives from chancellor George Osborne to the Daily Mail seemed to feel the problem was not just that they had killed them but that they had had them in the first place.
Tory politicians such as Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith have suggested limiting child benefits to the first two children.
In a culture where children are viewed, not as the citizens and taxpayers of the future in whose support the current generation has a stake, but as a luxury to be supported only by parents prosperous enough to afford them without burdening the taxpayer, it is unsurprising that the extermination of unwanted babies through abortion is effectively encouraged.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, abortion was rightly viewed by almost all first-wave feminists as a terrible symptom of women’s oppression. According to Sylvia Pankhurst:
“It is grievous indeed that the social collectivity should feel itself obliged to assist in so ugly an expedient as abortion in order to mitigate its crudest evils. The true mission of society is to provide the conditions, legal, moral, economic and obstetric, which will assure happy and successful motherhood.”
It is a great coup for Moloch when the ugly expedient can be passed of as a ‘choice’ for which women should be grateful; still more when supposed feminists, instead of seeking to free women from it, celebrate it as their totem.
For some women – financially better off, with supportive family and employers – abortion might really be a ‘choice’. But it is a ‘choice’ whose exercise increases the burden for other women. If an unplanned baby is viewed not as the responsibility of both parents, but purely as the woman’s choice alone, it effectively absolves the father of any moral responsibility for it.
It also absolves society of the duty to support her. So abortion undermines women who don’t want it.
Our culture fetishises personal freedom, choice and self-gratification but despises concepts like duty and responsibility. So the idea that when two adults conceive a child through consensual sex, then find themselves faced with an accidental pregnancy, they should both take responsibility for the baby even if they didn’t want it, is not popular.
And it really is a baby: anyone who has seen an ultrasound scan of a twelve-week-old fetus and listened to its heartbeat, but still claims that it is merely a ‘clump of cells’ rather than a tiny human being, is in denial; turning their eyes and ears away from the evidence and clinging to an unscientific (libertarian, pseudo-feminist) dogma.
Dehumanising the unborn baby (‘fetus’) turns it into a disposable commodity with no value except as an extension of its parent’s desires, after which all liberal values go out the window. In the UK, an unborn baby after twenty-four weeks is legally protected from abortion – but not if it is disabled, in which case it can be legally killed right up to birth.
Thus in the UK, the overwhelming majority of unborn babies detected as having Down’s syndrome, spina bifida or cerebral palsy are aborted; even a ‘defect’ as minor and correctible as a cleft palate or a club foot can spell a baby’s doom.
This murderous discrimination is taking place in the country that indulged in an orgy of self-satisfaction last summer when it hosted the Paralympic Games.
In other countries, other groups are disproportionately killed off through abortion. In the US, as well as the poor and the disabled, it is Hispanic and particularly black babies. In India and China, it is baby girls: abortion is popular in both these extremely misogynistic societies, greatly contributing to their huge gender imbalances in favour of men over women.
Women, of course, have the right to control their own bodies. But it is questionable if this principle encompasses a procedure that in the UK is performed by largely male NHS doctors, paid for by largely male taxpayers. And for every body so ‘controlled’, another is destroyed or mutilated.
As a result of failed attempts to abort them, Gianna Jessen was born heavily disabled with cerebral palsy, Ana Rosa Rodriguez was born with her right arm missing, while Carrie Holland-Fischer was born with a facial disfigurement, as a result of which, she recalls, ‘society had labelled me as ugly and unacceptable. I was made fun of all during school, and even the teachers made fun of me.’
These women were at least lucky enough to survive.
Women who seek abortions are victims of a society that does not respect them or their babies; they should not be stigmatised or treated as criminals. But let us stop pretending that this ongoing bloody tragedy is a manifestation of their emancipation.
75 Responses to “Abortion is a tragic choice no woman should have to make”
GO
“What horrendous, eugenicist, bigoted anti-disabled views you hold, poorly hidden behind the veneer of ‘choice’.”
This just beggars belief.
Far from using a ‘veneer’ of choice to make her position look more palatable, Catriona has expressed a position that genuinely has as its starting point the belief that women have the right to choose what happens to their own bodies. Everything else she says – e.g. that women have the right to abort disabled fetuses without being shamed or made to feel guilty – follows from that.
Your position, on the other hand, takes as its starting point the belief that fetuses are human beings towards whom we – and the parents especially – have huge moral responsibilities. Women who have abortions, you say, are ‘killing their babies’. The practice of abortion is ‘murderous’. Women should ‘take responsibility’ for their babies even if they’re unwanted. Any woman who thinks it’s morally permissible to abort a disabled fetus because of concerns about that potential child’s quality of life, or the impact of a disabled child on their family, is an anti-disabled bigot.
But you don’t think this murderous practice should be *prohibited*. You don’t think anti-disabled bigots should be *stigmatized* if they choose to kill their babies. Oh no. “Women, of course, have the right to control their own bodies.”
Now *that* is a ‘veneer of choice’.
Marko Attila Hoare
I take it then that you have no problem with a woman aborting a fetus because it has the ‘wrong’ gender or skin colour ? And that you have no problem with the sort of sex-selective abortions widely practiced in India and China in order to kill off unwanted baby girls ?
Or do you consider disability the only legitimate grounds for discrimination ?
Catriona Sharp
No. I believe in families making practical choices that suit the society we live in. My parents made that decision because they did not want to burden my sister. I think the choice to go ahead with a pregnancy knowing that the child is severely disabled is a courageous one, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right for every family or every child. If you were pregnant knowing your child would never mature beyond the mental age of one, would never think independently, would never experience anything but either a care facility or your desperate and possibly inadequate attempts to care for them, would you seriously want that for your child?
Right so you care about foetuses more than women. *slow clap* Guess that’s my place in society decided.
I find it really fucking hilarious that you seriously think you have a right to preach to women about their reproductive choices. Check your privilege.
Catriona Sharp
I note you haven’t chosen to address the fact that you’re preaching highly disputed and controversial research as fact. But then again, I suppose you as a man get to define what’s true and what’s not, just like you, as a man, get to define what’s moral for a woman to do with her own body.
Again, check your privilege.
GO
There is a genuine debate about the rights and wrongs of sex selective abortion among people who share a basic belief in a woman’s right to choose. See here, for instance:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/21883
I’m not going to get into the nuts and bolts of the arguments here, and I don’t mind admitting I’m on the fence. Still, two points:
1 – it’s certainly not *obvious* that having the right to choose whether or not to carry a baby to term entails having the right to choose to carry only a baby of a preferred sex to term. (Is it obvious that my having the right to decide whether to donate blood or organs entails my having the right to decide that they can only be used for the benefit of people of some preferred sex, colour, sexuality, etc.? Surely not.)
2 – while being female (say) might be a Bad Thing in the eyes of a particular person or even a whole society, plainly it’s not a Bad Thing in itself. Being disabled *is* a Bad Thing in itself, though, or so we usually think – hence our attempts, as a society, to prevent, cure or treat the conditions responsible for disability where possible, and to mitigate the negative effects of disability where not (e.g. through the provision of guide dogs and wheelchairs). So there’s a glaring disanalogy between abortion on the basis of sex and abortion on the basis of disability.
Mea culpa: I averted my eyes from the complexities here with that rather glib statement about how ‘everything else follows’ from the simple principle that a woman has the right to decide what happens to her own body. Plausibly at least, it is not as simple as that and there are legitimate and illegitimate reasons to have an abortion.