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
In response to the argument ‘As you haven’t actually been pregnant I don’t think you have experienced ‘both sides’ of the incredibly multidimensioned shape at all.’
one could respond: ‘As you haven’t actually been aborted I don’t think you have experienced ‘both sides’ of the incredibly multidimensioned shape at all.’
Well, Melissa Ohden has experienced being aborted, and her opinions are well worth listening to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEQR1-1OXK4
DSD
Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor and recheck which site I just read this on. Wow…cannot applaud enough.
GO
Let me try to pin down why I think your position makes it hard to accept your article as a reasoned contribution to a debate among progressives with a basic set of shared principles and values.
You say “The starting point for any genuinely progressive, liberal politics is that all individuals and groups of people have rights and should be defended when threatened or oppressed”. So far so good.
Then you make what I think are two significant missteps:
Firstly, you help yourself to the principle that fetuses are, from an early stage, human beings – ‘unborn babies’ – and as such have moral value just like every other human being.
Typically people who subscribe to that principle do so because they have a religious conviction that fetuses/unborn babies have souls and are thereby persons with moral value. You don’t share that conviction, and the only reason you give for believing that fetuses are human beings with moral value is that, well, they *look* like (very young) human beings on an ultrasound scan.
But that does not *remotely* suffice to establish the principle you’re asserting. For that you’d need to do some good, scientifically-informed philosophy. Basically you need first to establish what are the qualities of human beings that give them moral value – sentience? Personhood? Rationality? – and then to establish that embryos/fetuses have these qualities (in the right way, to a sufficient degree etc.) from such-and-such a stage of development.
Secondly, you don’t really attend at all to the implications of the principle that a person’s body is *his or her body*. *Even if* fetuses are human beings whose lives have moral value, it does not follow that any *other* human beings are under a moral obligation to use their own bodies to sustain their lives.
Maybe I could sustain the lives of other human beings – including babies and especially sick and disabled people – by letting them use bits of my body (bone marrow, kidney etc.). But nobody thinks that if I *fail* to do so I’m ‘killing people’, ‘exterminating babies’ or engaging in ‘murderous discrimination’. When women say ‘my body, my choice’, this is the real point: they’re not *obliged* to allow a fetus/baby to use their body as an incubator pretty much regardless of the moral status of that fetus/baby, much as men are not obliged to donate kidneys pretty much regardless of the moral status of people on waiting lists for kidneys. Hence the language of ‘murder’ etc. is (to say the least) inappropriate.
And speaking of language: I wasn’t trying to establish an equivalence between your position and homophobia, but an equivalence or analogy between the ‘shape’ of your argument and the shape of a homophobic argument that similarly mixes liberal sentiments with very strong, condemnatory language of the sort typically used by the religious Right in these debates: ‘murder’, ‘killing babies’/’disease’, perversion’.
unity_ministry
To be clear, I don’t claim to speak for all women and never have done. What I do write about is research evidence from a wide range of abortion-related studies, for example:
“In agreement with previous research in this area, women reported a range of reactions to abortion with a substantial number reporting feelings of grief, guilt, loss and related emotions in response to abortion. Over 85% of women reported at least one of these adverse reactions, with a third reporting five or more of these reactions. However, these negative reactions to abortion were offset by positive responses including relief, happiness and satisfaction, with these responses being noted by over 85% of women. Importantly, on the basis of assessments made at age 30, nearly 90% stated that the decision to have an abortion was the correct one, and only 2% reported that they believed the decision to be incorrect. These findings are consistent with previous research which suggests that the great majority of women do not regret the decision to have an abortion, and the accumulated evidence on this topic does not support recent claims from pro-life advocates that large numbers of women who have abortions regret their decision.”
Fergusson et al. (2009), Reactions to abortion and subsequent mental health, British Journal of Psychiatry.
As for you comments on my article, particular in regards to cleft lip, you might at least make some to accurately reflect the context in which I address that issues, which is in terms of how one interprets the provisions in abortion law relating to abortion on grounds of disability, ie.:
“There are, in fact, quite a number of genetic conditions, which vary considerably in terms of both prevalence and severity, for which a cleft lip or palate may be diagnostic if discovered in the womb.Some are extremely rare and give rise to serious disabilities, e.g. Malpuech Syndrome for which it was reported, in 1999, that there were only 12 recorded cases worldwide at the time.
Others are somewhat more common, such as Treacher Collins Syndrome, which is found in about 1 in 50,000 births – that’s a fairly low risk but not a negligible one. With an average of 900.000 conceptions and a little over 700,000 births a year in England and Wales, you’d expect to see 14-18 cases a year with a little over 1 in 7,000 cases of a cleft lip/palate. The presence of a cleft lip can be also indicate the possibility of Siderius X-linked mental retardation, one of number of X-linked genetic conditions which collectively account for around 16% of all cases of intellectual disability in males.
So, a cleft lip/palate is not always just a cleft lip/palate. In some, admittedly relatively rare, cases it can be an indication of a much more serious genetic condition for most such conditions there is currently no diagnostic test that one can use on a foetus – for some the cause has yet to be identified.
This is where legitimate questions of interpretation can arise when it comes to the text of the Abortion Act 1967. For an abortion to permissible within the law after 24 weeks, there must be a significant risk of a serious disability but what exactly is a ‘substantial risk’ and is this something that should be evaluated solely in terms of
prevalence?”
That cleft lip may, in some cases, be diagnostic of more serious conditions, some of which are extremely serious such as Edwards and Patau syndrome, is a fact, one that families faced with the decision as to whether to continue with a pregnancy must necessarily take into account when deciding whether or not they are in a position to cope with the stresses and strains of raising a disabled child.
For some, raising a disabled child is a rewarding experience, for others a disastrous one that ultimately results in the disintegration of the family unit. Only the individuals involved are actually in a position to judge their own ability to cope with such a situation.
As for the risible proposition that Marko is setting out a liberal, progressive position in his article, that merely proves Orwell’s point that certain words have become so debased and variable in meaning as to render them entirely meaningless. Let’s be absolutely clear here that Marko’s position, in advocating the prohibition of abortion, amount to the state compelling women to carry pregnancies to term irrespective of their personal wishes in the matter.
Of course, he tries to sugar coat that particular fact with lots of high minded talk of creating a utopian society in which abortion is theoretically unnecessary because women will have all the social and financial support they could possibly need but the fact remains that even were such a society possible, there would still be some women who, for whatever reasons, would decide that they are not ready for motherhood, women who would be compelled by the state to carry a pregnancy to term against their express personal wishes, with all the unpleasant consequences that entails; the same consequences we saw prior to the legalisation of abortion in 1967.
Finally, I note in comments that adoption has been raised as an alternative to abortion. Well, again, let’s look at the research evidence that proponents of adoption routinely ignore:
“A number of studies of relinquishing birthmothers have found that having a child adopted is an experience of loss and grief that persists beyond the immediate aftermath of the parting, and in many cases is long term. Winkler and Van Keppel (1984) studied 213 women who had all relinquished a child for adoption when they were young and single. A great sense of loss was a key feature of many women’s stories and the greater the sense of loss reported by the women, the worse was their adjustment. For many women this sense of loss did not diminish with time, in fact 48% of the sample reported that it had intensified and was worse at particular times such as birthdays and Mother’s Day. For some women a strong sense of loss had persisted for up to 30 years. Well over half of respondents rated the adoption of their child as the most stressful experience of their life. The psychological functioning of the birthmothers was also measured and was found to be significantly worse than a matched sample of women who had not had a child adopted. This research clearly shows that it is unrealistic to make the assumption that women whose children are adopted will quickly ‘get over’ this experience. In many cases the negative consequences are serious and long lasting. Many similar findings have been outlined by other researchers both in this country (e.g. Bouchier et al, 1991; Howe et al, 1992; Hughes and Logan, 1993; Logan, 1996; Wells, 1994) and abroad (e.g. Condon, 1986; Deykin et al, 1984; Rockel and Ryburn, 1988) and key themes are obvious in biographical accounts (e.g. Powell and Warren, 1997).”
Neil, E. (2004) “Supporting the birth relatives of adopted children: A review of relevant literature”
AM Clare
Actually I do feel emancipated by the provision of safe, legal abortion thanks. It would be better if it was on-demand rather than requiring the signature of two doctors etc, but hey-ho.
The reason for this is that I do not want to carry, give birth to, or parent a child. Even if the state support was the best in the world, even if the father doted on me. I just don’t want to. I don’t give my consent for a being to grow in my body and then force its way out of me potentially causing my death or disabling me physically or mentally. My consent matters, or it should do in a society claiming to care about women.
My mother could’ve aborted the embryo that became me – and I would never have existed. Similarly, my parents could have used contraception and her egg would never have been fertilised. If we follow the ‘this person is glad they’re alive’ style of argument (that the OP is referring to when he mentions survivors of botched abortions) to its logical conclusion, then we end up banning contraception and forcing people to have sex.
Whatever way you try to twist it, whether you personify embryos or pretend to care about women’s welfare, banning abortion only has one outcome – forcing women to do something with their body that they do not want to do. Many of those women will find a way to express their wishes anyway whether it be travelling somewhere where they can get a safe abortion (e.g. Irish women travelling to England*) or trying a ‘backstreet’ version such as getting abortion pills from the internet or threading a knitting needle through their cervix.
Women like to have agency over their bodies and lives, you see. Whether you accept that as valid or not.
*Why don’t you ask how emancipated Irish women feel after the death of Savita Halappanavar?