Thersites Writes

Let me nail my colours to the mast here and say I support a woman's right to choose. Or, since I hate euphemisms, abortion. For those who claim I'm in favour of murder, I'd like to ask if it's any less of an act of murder to have an unwanted, unloved child born into this world? Or for that child to grow up poor because his or her mother got pregnant too young or for that child to be given up after its birth and passed from foster home to foster home, with no roots to speak of? Or is stopping the 'evil' of abortion worth the wretched sight of babies born permanently ravaged by their mothers' drug habits? You may as well dash the child's brains out there and then on the delivery room floor.

Or is it any less an act of murder for women's bodies to have their autonomy taken away by the state? Would you be so 'pro-life' if the precedent thus set lead to you not being able to do with your body in the way you want? If abortion is banned, it could well be a slippery slope. Either way, there would be a roaring trade in coathangers.

That said, I really hate the terms 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life'. It’s the sort of misleading Newspeak so beloved by our cherished New Labour government. 'Pro-Choice’ isn’t in favour of the foetus having a choice. (Not that it could anyway, but you get the point). And 'Pro-Life' doesn't rate the mother's life too highly either. (The implication being that the unborn child is far purer and so far worthier than the murdering slut carrying it is).

If either side had any balls, they'd call their stances 'Pro' or 'Anti' Abortion and be plain and honest about it. But that would yank away the self-righteous bullshit of ideologues trying to preach their epic battle against the forces of evil/Satan/infanticide/patriarchy/rape/incest. (Delete according to taste).

But still, stories like this make my blood boil. I think a later (as in, 20+ weeks) abortion is only right in extreme and/or life threatening circumstances. Having a clubfoot isn't, the last time I checked, a killer. It smacks instead of parents who are so damn vain and demanding, that a child with any flaws just simply won’t do. Heaven forfend that these (often well off) tossers have to put up with looking after a child with Down’s Syndrome, or Spina Bifida or, in one extreme case, is able to hear while their parents are deaf. Gene scanning just commodifies the human condition. It also lets parenthood – already one of the dodgiest and least reliable of professions – run amuck with its petty egotism and small-dicked desire for control. (Cleft palates aren’t an excuse either.)

Far be it for me to be controversial at this point, but at their most extreme, ‘Pro-choice’, ‘Pro-life’ and Nazism all connect at their most extreme points. They all objectify people’s bodies, all get drunk on their own piety and they all make far too narrow judgements on who does and doesn’t get to live. If you don’t want your child because their left leg is slightly wonky, or you’ll force a young girl to give birth to her rapist’s child then you’re marching to the tune of the truly sinister whether you like it or not.

The hard and sharp answer to the abortion debate is that there has to be a balance struck between ‘choice’ and ‘life’. I don’t think there should be laws stopping mothers getting abortions in most cases. But this needs to go hand in hand with the consensus that disability is not a ‘problem’ and that every child born should be valued. Whether or not parents with ‘hard’ lifestyle choices have abortions is one thing, but we should all reserve our right to condemn them for it nonetheless. To sum up, Abortion is too complex an issue to be solved with one simple, pat answer. Not that this will stop anyone.