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
“Regarding Go’s argument that a fetus is not a person because they don’t possess sentience, personhood or rationality”
I made no such argument. I was merely sketching the shape of the argument *you* would have to make in order to establish the principle that fetuses are human beings with moral value just like other human beings. The point being that as things stand, your attempt to establish that principle – on which so much of your general argument rests – begins and ends with the observation that fetuses *look* like very young human beings.
“In fact, at the very least, having a brain and a heartbeat should be enough to define a fetus as a person.”
But by that definition a hamster is a person. Is that really what you mean? Again, this just won’t cut it as an attempt to establish the principle you put so much weight on.
unity_ministry
Oh dear, you’re relying on a report from the Christian Institute based on a report from LifeSite News???
You’re either an idiot, or you think everyone else is…
Tell you what, let’s look at some of the preliminary findings of the Turnaway study that the CI chose not to mention:
“The women in the Turnaway Study were in comparable economic positions at the time they sought abortions. 45% were on public assistance and two-thirds had household incomes below the federal poverty level. One of the main reasons women cite for wanting to abort is money, and based on the outcomes for the turnaways, it seems they are right.
Most of the women who were denied an abortion, 86%, were living with their babies a year later. Only 11% had put them up for adoption. Also a year later, they were far more likely to be on public assistance — 76% of the turnaways were on the dole, as opposed to 44% of those who got abortions. 67% percent of the turnaways were below the poverty line (vs. 56% of the women who got abortions), and only 48% had a full time job (vs. 58% of the women who got abortions).”
…
“Turnaways were more likely to stay in a relationship with an abusive partner than
women who got abortions. A year after being denied an abortion, 7% reported an incident of domestic violence in the last six months. 3% of women who received abortions reported domestic violence in the same time period. [Diane Greene] Foster emphasized that this wasn’t because the turnaways were more likely to get into abusive relationships. It was simply that getting abortions allowed women to get out of such relationships more easily. So it’s likely that these numbers actually reflect a dropoff in domestic violence for women who get abortions, rather than a rise among
turnaways.
This pattern of violence is also part of a larger pattern that shows turnaways are more likely to remain connected to the fathers of their children. Obviously, this isn’t always a good thing, as the violence statistics reveal. But even in the vast majority of cases where violence isn’t involved, Foster noted that these men aren’t living with the turnaways. The researchers asked women about cohabiting with partners, and found that men were no more likely to live with a turnaway who’d
borne their children than they were to live with a woman who had an abortion. “The man doesn’t stick around just because you have the baby — that’s the crude way of putting it,” Foster said.
…
One of the biggest concerns about abortion is that it causes emotional problems that lead to clinical depression. The Turnaway Study looked at that question from two angles: how did turnaways and women who got abortions feel; and did they become clinically depressed. “It’s important to remember that how you feel is a separate question from whether you have a mental health problem,” Foster said.
As the researchers said at the American Public Health Association Meeting, “One week after seeking abortion, 97% of women who obtained an abortion felt that abortion was the right decision; 65% of turnaways still wished they had been able to obtain an abortion.” Also one week after being denied an abortion, turnaways told the researchers that they had more feelings of anxiety than the women who had abortions. Women who had abortions overwhelming reported feeling relieved (90%), though many also felt sad and guilty afterwards. All of these feelings faded naturally over time in both groups, however. A year later, there were no differences in anxiety or depression between the two groups.
In other words, the Turnaway Study found no indication that there were lasting,
harmful negative emotions associated with getting an abortion. The only emotional difference between the two groups at one year was that the turnaways were more stressed. They were more likely to say that they felt like they had more to do than they could get done.
None of this translated into clinical depression. “Abortion and depression don’t
seem directly linked,” Foster said. “We’ll continue to follow these women for five years, though. So we might find something else down the line.”
——————-
In regards to the evidence on mental health, thus far, the Turnaway study is consistent with other credible research which shows that regardless of the outcome of a pregnancy, most women adapt successful to their circumstances – most, but not necessarily all.
As useful as the Turnaway study is, there are obvious limitations. The number of women enrolled on the study is relatively small (n=231) and the circumstances under which they were refused an abortion mean that it’s highly unlikely that we can reasonably generalise its findings to the vast majority of women who choose to terminate a pregnancy, or to specific sub-groups, such as those who choose to have an abortion (or not) due to the foetus being diagnosed with a serious congenital or genetic abnormality.
As research goes it’s a useful start but there is more yet to be learned.
As for your trite lecture of the “principle of responsibility” can I suggest that you take your head out of your arse for five minutes and take a good close look at the world. Women who choose to have an abortion are nothing if not aware of responsibilities that go with bringing a child into the world – that’s why many choose to have an abortion, because for whatever reasons (money, career, relationship stability or lack thereof, impact on ability to provide for existing children – yes, believe it or not, many women who have abortions already have kids) they conclude that at that point in their life a(nother) child is not something they can responsibly take on.
Reader
Anyone who has had the experience of abortion either first hand or through someone close knows that deep moral dilemmas are often involved in such decision, either at the time it is taken or later in life: women who reaching their 40s realize they spoiled their only chance to conceive; women and men who, upon finally becoming parents change perspective and now see the fetuses as unborn babies; and so on.
And yet, when it comes to the debate about the balance between the rights of the woman and the protection of the fetus, all subtlety seems to be lost, amongst many of the people who feel they have a say on this: everything becomes black and white, flat, as some of the comments in this thread show, and people go to considerable lengths to justify their opinion, as we can see with a reader citing a study that says that in very rare occasions cleft palate may be associated with other malformations, in order to justify that it’s legitimate to do a late abortion on a fetus with a minor problem, easily corrected with surgery. If on the side of the ‘pro-lifers’ positions are often derived from religious beliefs, on the side of the so-called pro-choicers, even more often their opinions as they are presented seem to be are informed by a nihilism attitude towards society and life.
Marko Attila Hoare
Her mother’s pregnancy was artificially terminated before she had reached the normal stage of viability, forcing her from the womb in a manner that would kill the great majority of fetusus. True, she miraculously survived. But she was not an embryo; she was a fetus estimated to be 18-22 weeks old – entirely capable of experiencing pain and trauma. No, she can’t actually have remembered what happened, but accounts from abortion survivors suggest that the trauma of the abortion does leave emotional or subconscious traces.
The way you describe it completely minimises the trauma she experienced from learning that her biological mother tried to kill her, and all the shame and guilt that she subsequently experienced. The experience has clearly defined her life; she is a pro-life activist.
The point is not to ‘bring into existence as many human beings as possible’, but to value and protect those who are already in existence.
Jacko
Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t you a historian? You’re not a doctor, a scientist or a theologian too are you? Why should we ascribe any more importance to your views on abortion than those of say, a car mechanic?