Let me first provide you with the background to explain why
I was so frustrated. This panel discussion gave the floor to five women – and
these women were all pro-life feminists. Yes, pro-life and feminist. There is
no reason why those two words need be incompatible, contrary to one attendee’s
attack: “How can you call yourself a feminist and sit up there and say those
things?” That was the kind of attitude that annoyed me.
A short while before I made my way over to the event I heard
that people were planning to protest about the event taking place. Not again, I thought. The previous term
Oxford University had made the headlines yet again, for shutting down a debate
(also hosted by OSFL) on abortion because of fears posed to the ‘security’ of
students. It was yet another example of how views that differ from the norm get
shut down and deemed invalid. On the other hand, the Oxford Union invited the
far-right party leader of the Front National in France to speak uninterrupted
for 50 minutes and claimed her right to free speech. Double standards anyone?
Being pro-life means that you value a child’s right to life.
Feminism means you believe in the equality of the sexes. I do not in any way
see how you can’t subscribe to both those
outlooks.
If you’ve followed other posts that I’ve written then you’ll
already know why I identify as a feminist. What I’m going to explain today is
why I am pro-life: that is, why I don’t believe in abortion. I hope that you
will hear me out (or, read me out, as
the case may be).
1. ABORTION TAKES AWAY THE RIGHTS OF AN INNOCENT HUMAN BEING.
Abortion is the taking away of a life. That’s usually called
murder. But in the case of an unborn child many countries deem termination in a
different light. Apparently if you don’t have a voice you don’t count as a
human being. Many will state matter-of-factly: “Oh it’s just a ball of cells”. I
would argue – and scientific research would validate my stance – that from the
moment the sperm cell fertilises the egg cell a life has been formed. And thus
begins one of God’s greatest gifts to nature: the gift of life.
2 . IT'S A MARK OF WORRYING INDIVIDUALISM.
I don’t believe in abortion because I don’t believe I have
more rights than any other human being. The same affinity that I feel with
victimised Muslims even though I’m a Christian I feel with unborn babies – and
that affinity is the web of humanity.
Unfortunately however, I feel the individualism that our
society prioritises: the ‘me before anyone else’ attitude which revolves around
‘me, myself and I’ means that often the solidarity the concept of human
solidarity goes outta the window. Our
interests matter more than anyone else’s. So of course in this context our
plans to continue with higher education or get promoted at work become more
important than an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy. And hey, abortion’s very
easy to get nowadays! On average around 190,000 abortions are carried out each
year in England and Wales alone. In spite of the fact that technically, the
1967 Abortion Act did not legalise abortion – rather it provided a legal defence
for those implementing it – termination is seen as a quick fix for many, with
the latest statistics even revealing that many now use it as a form of
contraception. The conditions which allow for abortion are ambiguous, with the
first being that continuing with the pregnancy involves ‘a greater risk to the
physical or mental health of the woman, or her existing children, than having a
termination’.
This is so undefined that many exploit the system citing
reasons such as "my friends would get to party all night whilst I’d have to
stay at home looking after my kid" as the causal factor for depression. And
these are typically young teenage girls who have no problem saying yes to sex,
just take issue with the consequence that could come with it. I remember once
reading about a girl who by the age of fifteen had gone through with an
abortion four times (despite the fact that the legal age of consent in the UK
is 16), with one being the termination of a foetus conceived during a one-night
stand.
It does seem rather absurd to me that some Oxford students
involved in shutting down the OSFL debate some months ago used the mantra ‘my
uterus is not up for debate’ as their reason. Abortion is a global societal
issue and has real consequences for the mother, the father, society at large –
not to mention the tiny foetus whose respiratory and circulatory system gets
shut down.
Do you know that 97% of abortions in the UK are funded by
the National Health Service? Surely that makes it an issue that anybody paying
taxes has a right to discuss.
3. IS IT REALLY PRO-CHOICE?
The people that condemn those like me who take a pro-life
stance on the issue insist that we’re being unfair and that we’re not taking
into account the genuine difficulties that some women may face that push them
to have an abortion. I remember one of the things that really frustrated me at
this panel discussion I attended was the complete unwillingness by some who
disagreed with the speakers’ point of view to hear them out and mull over what
they were trying to say: which, put simply, was that the right to life
supersedes any other right and that abortion is harmful to all those involved.
I’ve often thought that ‘pro-choice’ as an ideology was
rather unsuitably named. Is it really a choice? We know the embryo in the womb
certainly doesn’t have a say in whether or not he or she can be born. But does
the mother really have a say? Anecdotes and official reports from the British
Medical Association would seem to prove otherwise. I have heard cases of women
only being given leaflets on termination by GPs and other medical professionals,
with absolutely no information provided about the other option – going through
with the pregnancy with adequate help along the way. Young vulnerable women
often feel pressured into getting rid of their babies, especially when they are
often conscious of the very real possibility that their partners might leave
them if they discovered they would have to take on the role of a father. Often
women turn up at abortion clinics because they have explicitly been told by
their boyfriends that if they go through with the pregnancy then that will be
the end of their relationship. Under such circumstances I don’t really see how
it’s the woman’s choice.
4. IT PROMOTES DANGEROUS ATTITUDES TOWARDS CERTAIN STIGMATISED GROUPS.
Something that really moved me emotionally as I listened to
these pro-life women tell their stories was the recurring theme of termination
as being targeted at particular groups already under-valued in society. No-one
really talks about it and few people know it – but abortions are
disproportionately carried out on foetuses that screening indicates show signs
of disability. Babies with Down’s Syndrome and even cleft lips (which can be
surgically altered after birth) are deemed unworthy of being brought into the
world. This is unbelievably sad and says a lot about our society’s views on
disabled people. Shockingly, unlike the termination of any other pregnancy, the
abortion of disabled foetuses can be carried out at any point up till birth. Those
that disagree with me may say that letting someone who would have an awful life
off having to live it is the kindest thing to do. But who can say what an awful life is? I’ve
gone through a lot of things in my life that if you knew the whole of you might
be surprised I was still alive (in fact it’s something I wonder at myself, but
I have an answer – God has been the strength of my life), but in spite of
everything I would say I’m still a very bubbly and happy person and have a lot
of things to be thankful for! Why shouldn’t someone born with a severe
disability be able to say the same of themselves? Nick Vujicic is a
motivational speaker who was born with neither arms nor legs yet has overcome
towering difficulties through his faith in Christ and is now happily married
with a son! http://www.attitudeisaltitude.com/
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson is another example that ‘disabled’
people are very able. She’s a paralysed and wheelchair-bound former athlete who
has won eleven gold medals in the Paralympics and has managed to do a lot of
things that people told her she couldn’t do (including having a daughter) despite
being told by some people that she’d ‘be better off dead.’ I attended a talk
she gave on assisted suicide in Oxford not too long ago – and I was
particularly struck by her point that ending someone’s life solely on the
grounds that their disability affords them a different quality of life only
increases hostility to disabled people, who, already subjected to a great deal
of discrimination, are now more frequently and more forcibly being told to go
and kill themselves. The same can be said of abortion that is carried out to
end a disabled foetus’ life, I would argue: the effects will be felt by those
who do make it into the world and grow up.
 |
| With Baroness Grey-Thompson after her talk. When I introduced myself to her I described myself as "a lover of athletics and a hater of injustice." She approved. |
Moreover, as much as science has advanced, humans still make
mistakes. One of the speakers at the panel discussion gave a personal account
of how her mum had been pushed to have an abortion when she was pregnant with
her son as doctors believed he would be born with Down’s Syndrome – but many
years on he shows no signs of it!
It’s scary how some people will take things into their own
hands when given the power to do so. One of the guest speakers, who works as a
paediatrician at Great Ormond Street Hospital, told us of reports that had
revealed that many doctors were signing the forms required to be completed
before a termination can take place even before they had met the woman involved
to assess her mental state – as required by law. Another common occurrence is
that often ethnic minority communities are targeted as in need of an abortion and
are discouraged from giving birth.
Some in the audience laughed at this suggestion and even
declined to lend an ear to the idea as it was further explained. The speaker
that introduced this theme spoke about how in the United States, more deprived
areas, often populated by ethnic minority citizens, are strategically fitted
with abortion clinics – with a disproportionate number in these places in comparison
with more well-off parts of the country. People have noted the roots that the Planned
Parenthood association in America has in eugenics.
Racial discrepancies and the targeting of physically
impaired babies aren’t the only discrepancies we see in abortion figures.
That’s right: girls are also disproportionately targeted for terminations. Ironic
really, isn’t it? The same people that tell us that as feminists we should be
in favour of abortion are supporting a procedure which has enabled the
“disappearance” of between 1,500 and 4,700 females from the national census
records of England and Wales (The Lost Girls)
and thousands more in countries like India and China.
Such discrepancies would appear to point to evidence of the
belief that some people are more worthy of living than others. This is an
incredibly harmful position for a society to take.
5. HARM TO THE MOTHER AND OTHERS
Few people broach the issue but it’s clear that abortion
often results in serious damage to the potential mother. The physical and mental damage suffered by the mother as a result of termination, I would argue, often exceeds the physical and mental trauma that the pregnancy itself may bring on.
Over the years I have read distressing stories of women who
went through with abortion and have regretted it deeply ever since. Post-traumatic
stress disorder, anxiety and clinical depression are some of the many emotional
hardships that women face post-abortion: the grisly image of their babies being
grabbed at and dismembered by the doctor’s forceps is too much for them to
bear. Women who go through with abortions are up to six times more likely to
commit suicide.
Everyone talks about the ‘quick fix’ that abortion provides
without talking about the multiple injuries that it engenders. The doctors that
hand women leaflets on termination but not on the support available during
pregnancy or the possibility of adoption tell them that they will feel no pain,
the process will be over quickly, the baby’s just a ball of cells, and at their
age it is the best thing for them to do. In my view these are all a bunch of
lies. The abortion procedure can very often
go wrong and can be painful for the
woman. Here’s one American woman’s account of her distressing experience: ‘The nurses
caused me to bleed, then they called the doctor on call. They told him I came
in bleeding, to make it look like I had tried to do the abortion myself. I
never even saw the doctor. I will never forget the pain. When I woke up,
I was having contractions like being in labour. Two weeks later, I had to
go to an OB/Gyn because I had a bad infection. He had to cauterize my uterus,
which he did without anaesthesia. I remember screaming, and he told me I was
making too much noise.’ You can read her story in full here: If I Could do it Over: Silent No More Awareness
People try to hide it but it is a fact that abortion can cause
complications which may lead to miscarriages: permanent damage to the uterus is
a common result of the procedure. The more abortions a woman has (and many do
have more than one), the more her fertility reduces. As well as infertility, sexual
intercourse can often become painful for the woman post-abortion.
That’s not to mention the problems that it causes for others
directly involved. With the mantra: ‘my body, my choice’, some fathers feel the
woman’s word is against theirs and resign themselves to losing a potential
child. Although it may not have been their body which had a life sucked out of
it, male partners do often suffer from depression after abortion. Relationships
are poisoned and often eventually end in divorce. http://www.birthmothers.org/extras/abortion-risks.htm
Studies have even shown that there are even adverse effects
for the children that follow an abortion. Case studies and research indicate that if a mother has had an abortion, this fact will
be communicated in one way or another to the surviving siblings.
The thought that must earn their
right to live leads to thoughts like: ‘Why am I alive, and not my brother or
sister? I don't deserve to be alive. I can't enjoy life when I know that my
parents might have killed me. They arranged for the death of my brothers or
sisters, who were probably better than me.’ Sibling Survivors
As well as the immediate family, abortion harms all. It
shows a flippant attitude to the preciousness of life, where it is no longer
seen as a gift, but instead a burden which we should be able to rid ourselves
of as we like.
6. CHILDLESS COUPLES ARE ALL AROUND.
This attitude is particularly upsetting for couples who long
to have children but cannot due to genetic problems which may leave them
infertile. It seems ironic really, that millions of children are being killed
off before they’re born every year whilst there are loving couples who would
give their right arm to be handed the gift of a child. In the United States
alone, there are around 2 million infertile couples waiting to adopt. Studies
show that for every one child put up for adoption, there are thirty-six couples.
I know what you might be thinking: That’s all very well and good Ruth, but what about rape? Surely you don’t
expect a woman to have to go through carrying her rapist’s child? I don’t
pretend that this is an easy thing to do: we all know that rape is a vile act
and having a constant reminder of such a horrific event is not something I
would wish upon anybody. But as the speakers at the panel discussion I went to
emphasised, abortion is harmful to all those
involved. The effects that may follow an abortion could well be worse than the
act of rape itself. Adoption provides a way for the woman to give her child a
safe home without having to handle the hurt that comes with rape. But some
women do more than just have the child – they go on to raise the child that has
resulted from their violation and see that child as a beautiful thing to have
come out of a horrible time.
I was deeply moved by this story I read – written by a girl
who was conceived through rape: http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/testimonies/testimony.aspx?ID=1154. I’m sure you will be too.
A harrowing phenomenon which no-one really seems to consider
is the cases of abortions that don’t go as planned. As in, the babies survive. Shockingly, health
services typically leave the babies to die in such cases – there have been cases
where new-borns have been left in dark rooms and survived for as long as 22
hours but have been ignored as they cry at the top of their lungs for human
aid. Then there are the other cases – where the dark shadows have been
conquered by a light has come in the form of a kind soul who wants the child to
live. I would recommend that you read this story, written by an abortion
survivor. http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/testimonies/testimony.aspx?ID=2208
7. LIFE IS A BEAUTIFUL THING.
I’m pro-life and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you
for taking the time to read this and not shutting me down.
Edit: 30th Dec 2016 - Yesterday I came across these deeply moving chats about abortion, and I would highly recommend that you take a look at them:
Edit: 30th Dec 2016 - Yesterday I came across these deeply moving chats about abortion, and I would highly recommend that you take a look at them:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/KrwScF89zWk
Part 2: https://youtu.be/trmAhxYAKPo
