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”
unity_ministry
“…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.”
That cleft palate may in some circumstances be diagnostic of more serious abnormalities is not a matter of opinion but simply a fact that necessarily has to be taken into consideration when such a diagnosis in made in utero.
Cleft palate is a signature issue for the anti-abortion lobby because it enables them to argue that abortions are being carried out under ground E (foetal abnormality) for trivial reasons. Such an argument is, however, only sustainable if one completely ignores the issue of diagnostic uncertainty and the risk of cleft palate being associated with much more serious abnormalities/genetic conditions.
Women/families receiving a diagnosis of cleft palate, and the doctors who counsel them on their options, do not have the luxury of ignoring those risks, however small in terms of frequency. Although many will find reassurance in the news that the risk of more serious abnormality is relatively low, some will not. There is a sizeable body of literature dealing with risk perception in low frequency, high impact events and people are often swayed more by their perceptions of the potential impact that they are by the relatively low frequency of such events, all of which explain, statistically speaking, why more American died in car accidents after switching from air to road travel after 9/11 than were actually killed in the 9/11 incident itself.
Nevertheless, the numbers here are very small – Prof. Joan Morris estimates 7-12 abortions on foetuses with only a cleft palate/lip or club foot in the last ten years – but one cannot simple assume – as the anti-abortion lobby does – that those decision were predicated solely on the assumption that a cleft palate was the only thing wrong with the foetus.
Noah Smith
“Women, of course, have the right to control their own bodies”. Good, glad that we agree. So the whole point of this article was the author registering his disapproval. I think its called “concern trolling”
The Dulster
Your self appointed role as Archbishop of the Left GO makes you sound like a raving moron. You exhibit all the emotionalism that you condemn. Sadly your kind is in large supply who wish that all deviation from your own view should be silenced. Free speech is the driver of debate while your huffings and puffings are the exact opposite.
DaneIlario
I’m sorry, but this article smacks of “we know better than the person who is pregnant”. You don’t. This article talks about how society maneuvers a woman into a position where she is purposely made to feel that she has no choice but to go through with an abortion. So, in essence, women are easily manipulated and therefore you need to watchdog because gosh…a woman needs all that guidance. Please. This “defense of the unborn” is just another method of control and religious propaganda. The writer of this is as bad as those the writer vilifies.
Noah Smith
Control always disguises itself as concern