Writing in detail about my thoughts on abortion is something that I don’t often do. This may be the legacy of my brief tenure on my university debating team, where I was instructed by the senior debaters that resolutions related to abortion should never be tabled, because the debates are unwinnable. Or maybe it’s because I know that many people who I care about may have different views on the issue from mine, and I don’t want to hurt feelings.
But today, two things inspired me to write about abortion: this thoughtful account of one woman’s experience with abortion. And the latest abortion row in the UK, over women having ‘sex-selection’ terminations, which has led the British health secretary Andrew Lansley to pledge to report clincs and doctors who performed the procedure to police.
I have never had an abortion. I suppose, hypothetically, that I would not have an abortion if at this stage of my life if I found myself pregnant by accident. But the hypothetical bit is the important thing: there might well be a situation in which I would feel differently. I don’t know what it is because it hasn’t happened. And I certainly don’t know the situation in which any particular woman desires or requires an abortion. So how could I or anyone else presume to legislate the circumstances in which it is justified or not justified?
This is, furthermore, what makes me loathe the ‘even in cases of rape or incest’ caveat that is so often appended to people’s views on choice. The idea that a woman must prove that she fits in to a certain kind of category of victim - a victim who’s had agency taken from her - in order to possess agency over her own body, is stupid. The reason that any one woman has an abortion is ultimately no one’s business but her own. She may choose to share the decision with her partner or other family members, or to discuss it with counsellors. But the idea that anyone should be able to arbitrate the final decision but the woman herself is idiotic.
It is my personal opinion that terminating a pregnancy for reasons of gender selection is awful. But while I hold that opinion, I cannot presume to know the precise reason any individual woman wishes to have an abortion because of the sex of her child. Criminalising the practice is not going to make that woman want to carry that pregnancy to term.
Reducing abortion rates is a positive goal. But it is never going to be achieved by blocking pregnant women’s paths to clinics. It’s going to be achieved through behavioural shifts long before conception. In particular, it’s going to be achieved through better initiatives to get people, especially young people, to use birth control, and to use it correctly. I’m looking at you, people trying to deny women access to birth control in the US. And I’m also looking at you, people who are whinging about how condoms are a bit gross and make sex less fun.
And in the case of sex-selection terminations, reduction in the rate of abortions is going to be achieved through shifting attitudes about gender - and the inherent values of men and women, and girls and boys. Not by putting people in prison.
