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Abortion Legislation


This post was published on Sunday 4 November 2007.

In the 40 years since abortion has been legal in Britain, the number of terminations taking place each year has increased from 22,000 to almost 200,000.

Anti-abortion groups stage rally

Since 1967 the yearly rate of abortion has multiplied - from 22,000 in 1968 to 193,000 last year. More than a fifth of pregnancies end that way.

What next for Britain’s abortion law?

On one side, pro-life campaigners are trying to get the government to reduce the upper abortion limit from twenty-four weeks. On the other, pro-choice campaigners are trying to reduce the number of doctors needed to approve an abortion from two to one.

I am against abortion. A life is a life is a life, and taking one is never right. But here I’m not going to argue the medical sides. They are well-worn and well-documented.

Instead, I’m going to argue about the very nature of the ‘pro-choice’ argument. It argues that ‘a woman should have complete control over her fertility and pregnancy’ (‘Pro-choice’ - Wikipedia). They say that women should have access to ‘safe and legal’ abortions, sometimes as a last resort, but not always. It is a question of rights, particularly the right-to-choose.

I agree that the ‘right-to-choose’ is an important human right. It should not be the case that innocent people should be detained against their will, or that children are denied the option to go to university.

But, and it is a big but, whenever we exercise our ‘right-to-choose’, we have to live with the consequences. I chose to marry my wife, and now I have to live with the consequences - I do not have the freedom to carry on acting as if I am a bachelor. In making choices, in opening doors, we inevitably close others.

When people exercise their freedom and have sex with someone, the result of which is pregnancy, they are constrained by their own freedom to have sex, and the biological consequences. Humans do not have the right to do whatever they like, and then ignore the consequences. The whole criminal justice system is based on this principle.

This is a simple solution - but the problem is complex. What about women who become pregnant after being raped? What about situations where the health of the mother is endangered by the baby? What about teenage pregnancies? What about ‘underground’ abortions - is it better to have legalised abortions, which are safe, or force underground abortions, which are not? Obviously the former, if abortions must happen.

So where does that leave us? The ideal solution does not work in such a messy situation. So, I would suggest the following things:

  • Abortion should not be seen as a ‘right’, but as a ‘last resort’, and only in specific cases of rape or perhaps danger to the mother’s health. It should never be used as a method of birth-control, to correct a ‘mistake’.
  • The upper limit for abortions should be significantly lowered.
  • Education in schools must be improved to lower the rates of teenage pregnancy. Obviously my preferred option would be to encourage teenagers to wait until they are married, but given that that will never happen, contraception should be freely available (which it is - so the use of it should be encouraged).
  • Education about what actually happens in an abortion, what the baby looks like and is capable of before it is aborted, the number of babies who have been legally aborted worldwide in forty years (well over 50 million) - should be much wider.

When pro-choice campaigners frame the argument in terms of ‘rights’, they miss the point entirely. The ‘rights’ are exercised, in most cases of abortion, a few weeks before. Instead, it is a case of dealing with the consequences of a sinful and broken world, in the best possible way, given the worst possible options.