THE SPECTATOR
TURNING ABORTION'S TIDE
Feminists, certainly older feminists, are in favour of abortion. They therefore oppose Mr David Alton's Bill, which will be debated in the House of Commons next Wednesday. His proposal is a simple clause preventing abortion after 18 weeks (the present limit is 28 weeks, the highest in the world). Interviewing Mr Alton in the Guardian, -Miss Polly Toynbee wrote:
Yet again we are to be treated to the disgusting spectacle of a virtually all-male House of Commons pontificating sanctimo- niously on when and how women must or must not give birth to children.
Never mind that it was an equally male House of Commons in 1967 that liberalised abortion in a way approved of by Miss Toynbee. She pressed on: I thought long and hard before I asked him [Mr Alton] the next question but it seems to me that in this matter, it is relevant as in few others. I asked if he was a homosexual.
Despite having 'thought long and hard', Miss Toynbee nowhere explained why the question was relevant. She merely blamed Mr Alton's attitudes on the `misogyny' of the Christian religion.
The assumption that abortion is an escape-route for women persecuted by men underlay an article against Mr Alton's Bill by Miss Annabel Ferriman, the Obser- ver health correspondent, but her conclu- sion worked against her beliefs. She wrote: If all the three million women who had had an abortion since the Act was passed wrote to their MPs supporting it, their letters would far outweigh the lobbying campaign planned by the anti-abortionists. But because so many of them have ambivalent feelings about their own experiences, that will never happen and change may come about by default.
Why do these `ambivalent feelings' ex- ist? Is the absence of three million letters really a 'default'?
Shortly after Miss Toynbee's article, the Guardian commissioned an opinion poll on Mr Alton's Bill. Last Friday, with com- mendable frankness, it published the re- sults as its main story. Only 15 per cent of those questioned wanted the limit to stay as high as it is. Fifty-one per cent of women said that it should be reduced to 18 weeks, as against 37 per cent of men. These findings should not surprise anyone, but one suspects that they have surprised Miss Toynbee and her allies. They help to expose the extraordinary moral cul-de-sac occupied by feminism and `liberal' ideas over the past 30 years. Abortion is a man's solution, not a woman's. For a man it is, literally, pain- less. It is a convenience which absolves him of future responsibilities at very low cost. It fits into a pattern of exploitation which one would think feminists would recognise — sleep with a girl, then refuse to live with the consequences, make sure, indeed, that the consequences cannot live at all. Prosti- tute women, make money out of them by pornography, divorce them when they get old and ugly, deny them or encourage them to deny themselves the fruit of their womb: all these actions go together. Abor- tion is an instrument of male power over women.
For a woman, however, abortion must at least be, in Miss Ferriman's words, `ambivalent'. It hurts. It distresses. It requires a decision which a man is always able to avoid. It means having to refuse the creative role unique to the female sex. Surely, then, abortion is an attack on what it is to be a woman? Surely feminists should see that it is an attack which comes mainly from men?
With the opposition to Mr Alton's Bill, we are confronted with a weird spectacle. People who genuinely believe in the free- dom and dignity of women find themselves arguing not just for a status quo which permits early abortion in some circum- stances, but for one which also permits babies old enough to be capable of life `Don't worry — we'll soon be bottoming out.' outside the womb to be killed inside it. The right to choose death seems to be the jewel in the crown of the liberation of women. The word `human' is often linked with the word 'right'. The arguments of the pro- abortionists sever that link.
Supporters of Mr David Steel's abortion bill in 1967 believed that a more liberal law would not lead to more abortion. They saw it as one weapon in the armoury of enlightenment which also included more sex education and the greater spread of contraception. In their hygienic view of life, more knowledge and more profession- al counselling were bound to make people more `sensible'. Sexual problems only arose from the ignorance and superstition of the past. Twenty years of enlightenment have now gone by and yet abortion has increased. In 1969, there were 54,000 abortions in England and Wales. In 1985, thete were 172,000.
There has never been a time when people have known as much as they now do about sex. There has also never been a time of so much child abuse, illegitimacy, abortion and divorce. Is it not possible that the breaking down of taboo has also broken down a moral tradition which enabled people, though poor, to cherish new life? A society which offers abortion or childbirth as almost equally acceptable alternatives does not do away with the sad phenomenon of an unwanted child. It makes children more likely to be un- wanted. It encourages picking and choos- ing, throwing away those who might, for example, be disabled, as a stallholder might throw away bruised fruit. It allows the value of a future life to be assessed according to other people's criteria, and gives no independent right to that life at all.
Mr Alton's Bill will only prevent the most grisly aspects of abortion. It will not greatly reduce the overall numbers. But it will begin the turning of the tide. Put the question this way: are you proud that three million foetuses have died in your country since 1967, or are you ashamed? If ashamed, support Mr Alton.
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