The latest tact by the anti abortionists is to say that women cannot make their own decision re abortion.
The task force took as a statement of biological and psychological fact that a mother’s connection to her unborn baby was more authentic than her own statement of desire not to be pregnant.
They trot out women who have regrets about their abortion, stats on women who have committed suicide, (perhaps the suicides had more to do with other things in their lives but lets not go there)and generally manipulate the tear ducts like a maudlin Disney film.
The danger I see here is twofold.
First though some women may regret their abortion, there are also many who regret their pregnancy.
So far those who support choice have refrained from dragging around women who have had severe post partum depression, who have stayed with an abusive husband because of welfare laws which make it impossible to leave and still care properly for their children, women who have been forced to carry to term a rapists baby, or 11 year olds who have been forced to carry their fathers baby to term, and parade them as some sort of freak show for all and sundry.
There are many choices in life we regret. I regret a few things but I’m not looking to define how others can live their lives based on those regrets.
Secondly if it is to be accepted that women cannot make their own decisions about this, what else are we unable to make decisions about?
Are we unable to decide who to vote for? Who to marry? Are we unable
to gain an education because our minds are too frail? Perhaps we are unable to determine what has been rape and what has been merely a sex act which as women our natures detest.
It seems to me that most of these issues are based on the fear of womens autonomy, the fear of their sexuality and the fear that church will lose control of people’s lives as Wordsworth penned
“What are fears but voices airy?
Whispering harm where harm is not.
And deluding the unwary
Till the fatal bolt is shot!”
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