ABORTION: TIME TO FACE the facts

I’ve never had an abortion, but at 18, I had not a shred of doubt about what I’d do if knocked up. In fact I remember being furious with a close friend who revealed that she wouldn’t – abort, that is. No matter that she was merely expressing, rather mildly, a personal choice – it was unsisterly, unfeminist and irresponsible to even consider an accidental baby.

Now I have children of my own and, guess what, I’ve changed my mind. The news that there is now a home test which will reveal the sex of your unborn child at six weeks has opened the abortion debate once again. Will that knowledge prompt

parents to get a termination if nature hasn’t delivered the right sex? It’s not inconceivable.

Actually, I don’t have a problem with early abortions, though I admit I feel lucky not to have had one. But I think it’s time that women addressed the late termination of babies who, horrifically, sometimes survive for several hours outside the womb - and would probably live if placed in a premature baby unit.

It’s no longer good enough to say that abortion is a right, a central tenet of feminism, under whatever circumstances and right up until the 24-week limit. We need to face up to the fact

that abortion may be a necessary evil, but it’s an evil none the less.

There’s a sort of tragic irony in the fact that, while abortion rates are higher than ever before, infertility blights the lives of many women and babies available for adoption are rare as hen’s teeth. We can decide not to get pregnant, but the opposite is rather harder to achieve, which seems reason enough to think very, very hard about an abortion. I wish I’d known that when I was 18.

Laura Tennant

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