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”
Marko Attila Hoare
‘Check your privilege’
Says the person enjoying all the privileges that come from having been born alive and without disability, as she argues in favour of killing off the disabled unborn.
Catriona Sharp
Christ almighty. Says the Oxbridge educated man who has never and will never have to experience the panic of a pregnancy of a child that he has no way of caring for and that could ruin both foetus and his lives. I have no idea where you think your right to judge women on reproductive choices comes from. I’d be curious to know.
A woman doesn’t want an abortion like she wants a new washing machine or a holiday, a woman wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw it’s own leg off.
THIS is why I get really fucking pissed off when men try and preach to me about abortion. Fine. Tell us all about your utopian society in which no woman ever has to consider abortion (though you conveniently look over the fact that many women just don’t want children, just like many men don’t, unfortunately our biology makes it a bit tougher for us to just walk away) but don’t judge the women who are making that choice now in this society.
Marko Attila Hoare
I don’t have any right to judge women ‘on reproductive choices’. I made clear in my article: ‘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.’ I do however have a right to judge a society that puts women in such a position.
As you rightly say: ‘a woman wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw it’s own leg off.’ That is precisely the point I was making. Upholding a woman’s ‘right’ to abortion makes as much sense as upholding an animal’s ‘right’ to gnaw its own leg off when it’s caught in a trap. The point is to get rid of all the traps so it doesn’t have to gnaw its own leg off, not to institutionalise and celebrate the leg-gnawing.
In fact, any man with a sense of responsibility can feel the panic of an unwanted pregnancy; an ethical man will not abandon a woman he has got pregnant, though he may not have the means to care for the baby either. Viewing an existing pregnancy purely in terms of the woman’s ‘choice’ does however make it easier for a less ethical man to walk away, as he can claim it is nothing to do with him.
Catriona Sharp
You might want to move away from language like “murderous” then. In using language like that you are shaming and possibly triggering women who have been through an ordeal that you will never experience and I hope with all my heart I never will.
You have manipulated statistics (foetal pain at 20 weeks – hotly debated, by no means a recognised fact) and this lack of concern for truth, this selectivity in your use of studies betrays a desire to get an emotional reaction from women and essentially shame them into continuing with pregnancies which may destroy them.
Right, well, women are making these choices based on the society that they are in. Accusing me of being a disablist eugenicist because I recognise that in this culture many women make that very reasonable choice in a horrendous situation is completely hysterical. I’m afraid I don’t see a world without traps any time soon, and our rights must be protected until that world exists. Even the most effective of contraceptives can fail. And despite your clear passion for the rights of the disabled, surely you can recognise that for some severely brain damaged or mutated unborn, abortion is genuinely kinder than a short life full of excrutiating pain.
I agree that for a man who is invested it is difficult, but you cannot claim that he is truly trapped in the way the woman in that situation is. I feel uncertain about including the man so completely in the decision to abort, he should be a part yes, but at the end of the day he will not have to bear the full psychological, emotional and physical trauma of a pregnancy. I believe men can empathise, but empathising is not the same as being trapped in that body. There are things that happen in men’s lives that I can empathise with, but never truly understand. I do not seek to control the choices men make on those issues (not that I’d ever have the opportunity, yay for patriarchy), I’m afraid this is one of the issues that men cannot control or seek to control.We have to trust women to make these decisions for ourselves, lest we infantilise womenand discredit our status as equals any more than society already does.
carryinthefire
Why do the people opposed to the argument (GO, AM Clare etc) in this piece find it so disagreeable? Because it is the uncomfortable and unspeakable truth? If a parent responsible for a disabled child for example decided to kill them because it interfered with their social life or ability to make money they would face a murder charge and much opprobrium. So euphemisms are used instead. People make cold, cruel, calculating choices all the time. If you made someone the proposition that they would get one million pounds if a person unrelated and unknown to them was killed by some anonymous agency and that no one would ever know their decision, I suspect a lot of people would be tempted. Abortion strikes me like that. A classic example of reductio ad absurdum but logically valid…except if you can convince people (especially yourself) that the unborn child is a fetus(sp?) and not an eligible human. It is refreshing to see an article like this in a left wing publication – there seems to be a rule that lefties have to be woman’s choice and can’t be pro-life but actually the two are very compatible.