There can be no more emotive topic, nor one that more clearly underscores the villainy of government versus the sensitivity of anarchism than the difficult matter of abortion.
Nadine Dorries, bless her cotton socks, has decided from her vantage point on the massive moral high ground she enjoys (living off the proceeds of extortion, generous expense claims, running off with another woman’s husband, etc.) to agitate for severe restrictions on other women’s rights to abortion.
Now abortion is a very difficult issue. People have incredibly strong views on when life begins and what could possibly constitute the murder of an unborn child. Other people have different views, some feel that abortion is simply another form of contraception and have no particular issues with repeatedly undergoing abortions. My view is somewhere in the middle, but crucially, I believe that every person has the right to make their own mind up.
I cannot imagine how a woman or a couple must feel, having to make the decision to have an abortion. But the truth of the matter is that it is something where you can advise, offer opinions or discuss, but the ultimate decision rests with the woman. It is her body.
Having any kind of law decreeing when, how and under what circumstances a woman can undergo abortion will often mean that difficult and unpleasant situations can be even more so. Especially when those laws are drafted by dogmatic, hypocritical lunatics.
In an anarchist society, the decision would rest completely with the woman, because it is her body. The individual beliefs of the woman, one way or the other, would have the ultimate deciding power. Small-minded dogmatists would quite rightly be marginalised, which is, in my opinion, the way life should be lived.
TJW is an itinerant blogger who lives in East Angular. He grew up as a fascist, mellowed into a Tory and was converted to anarchism in his middle age by the Devil's Kitchen.
{ 61 comments }
This is an area where my normally full-on libertarian views are tempered somewhat. Whilst I support the right to choose, something makes me think there needs to be a time limit. I understand this to be currently 24 weeks (except in very special circumstances). The rationale seems to be that at 24 weeks the foetus is probably viable. Intuitively, this makes sense. Some on the libertarian edge may argue that until the foetus is born, it is not a person and therefore does not warrant protection. But the logical conclusion is that abortion should then be an available option until the waters break – this doesn’t seem right.
I recognise, however, that my opinions on this matter are necessarily incomplete. Being among the half of the population who can never bear children, I feel that any views I hold can not be based on a full understanding of the emotions involved. Having said that, my partner is 24 weeks pregnant today (exactly apparently), and so I do have some skin in the game – but nowhere near as much as my partner.
But back to Ms Dorries; Yes, she is an interfering busybody who’s agenda is clearly to limit the choices of women, or to steer them into a “keep it” decision.
I’m not interested in whether the limit is 22 weeks, 24 weeks, or 75 bleeding weeks – its a red herring.
My body, my choice what risks to take with it.
I would never choose an abortion – far too rooted in disgust around the taking of life.
What I object to is the medical lobby using the parliamentary process to maintain control over who and when has a safe abortion.
Speaking as someone whose life commenced before the Abortion Act, I am only too painfully aware that women have always had abortions, always will.
I’ve lost good friends that way – and lain in a hospital bed myself, for other reasons, next to a young girl who screamed in agony throughout the night until she finally died mid morning.
The abortion act didn’t stop women dying in agony or screaming through the night.
It didn’t ‘start’ abortions.
It merely gave a powerful lobby the right to decide who could have a (reasonably) safe abortion, and who couldn’t.
Mostly on the emotive basis of a young Irish – southern Irish – girl who claimed, possibly truthfully, to have been raped, and who wasn’t allowed to leave that ‘Neanderthal’ country for the nice safe abortion friendly haven that Britain was supposed to become…….
Its not about when life begins, its not about ‘safe’ limits.
Its about control. State control. Decorated with a million emotive red herrings.
I totally respect your views on the morality of abortion – it should be up to the individual woman to decide, but I think it would be reasonable to conclude that the abortion act massively reduced the number of women dying as the result of botched back street procedures and made it relatively straightforward for those that wanted an abortion to get one safely. I don’t understand what all these red herrings are?
Yes, but if it reduced the risk – why only for some women, in some categories, ‘if’ they spoke the right words to their all powerful doctors?
If the object of the act was to reduce the risk of botched abortions – then you didn’t need all the gatekeeper power handed to Doctors. You simply permit abortion. full stop.
You don’t really think that back street and DIY abortions don’t still go on do you?
What do you think the women refused by the medical lobby do? Some just have a baby in resignation, but not all.
I’m not really getting your sub text here – it is relatively easy in the UK to get an early stage (under 16 weeks) TOP. After that it becomes more risky for the mother and late abortions are more restricted so there is an important medical decision here. The TOP will be done by a doctor, but there are no shortage of these in the UK as far as I am aware. I think Doctors should be involved inthe process and I don’t understand your reference to “the medical lobby”
I’m sure that DIY and backstreet abortions do still go on, but far fewer than before the Abortion Act thankfully. I would prefer to see resources go on helping women avoid the complications of backstreet abortions by making access easier
This is not a topic on which I feel at all qualified to give opinion, so I won’t. However, I did hear a brief item on a BBC news programme in which a journalist who had undergone abortions in the past spoke of her experiences, and in which Nadine Dorries explained her position. It seems that Ms Dorries wants women to have counselling (but only if they wish to) before they make their decision. She emphasised that she was not dictating to anyone. The jounalist’s account of her experiences seemed to bear out the sense of Ms Dorries’ proposals.
Abortion is a very emotive subject, and it does seem to be one that attracts a great deal of subjective – or outright distorted – reporting. That certainly doesn’t help the relatively uninformed, such as myself, to form a balanced judgement.
PS – On re-reading, it might seem that I’m aiming that last paragraph at Mr Wilson. I’m not – and if I gave that impression to him I apologise unreservedly, because he expressed his thoughts in a considered and temperate manner. The point was meant in the wider context of the debate.
Mad Nad’s position as explained by Engineer above does on the face of it sound quite reasonable. The worry seems to be that this is just the start of a long war of attrition to ban abortion on demand altogether. The state really shouldn’t get involved other than to set a gestation limit (24 weeks is probably still about right). Neutral counselling can’t do any harm if that’s what a woman chooses – can it?
It’s not exactly neutral counselling that is being advocated though.
“to agitate for severe restrictions on other women’s rights to abortion.”
Disclaimer: I am a papist.
I think this post is pure unmitigated bollocks. I could be wrong. But tell me. Is the proposed amendment – sponsored not only by Dorris, as one would think from the press coverage, but also by Frank Field – not simply this:
(1A)
In this section, information, advice and counselling is independent where
it is provided by either—
(i)
a private body that does not itself provide for the termination of pregnancies; or
(ii)
a statutory body.”.’.
This is not “any kind of law decreeing when, how and under what circumstances a woman can undergo abortion “. Is it? I ask because what you’ve written seems to be so contrary to what seems to me to be the case, that I worry I have missed something.
There is no compulsory pre-abortion counselling requirement (which would in any case rule out most Catholic counselling bodies, as providing evidence such counselling is considered to facilitate abortion).
What it would rule out is the highly dubious practice of counselling being provided by bodies who make money from carrying out abortions, or who have an interest in pushing them. I wouldn’t want a friend considering suicide to go to Dignitas for counselling. It would be cheeky of Dignitas to offer counselling for the suicidal, unless one meant the already decided.
Women aren’t stupid (I am one, so I may be biased) – they won’t go to the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants if they don’t want Religious Pro-Life Fanatics, or Dogmatic Hypocritical Lunatics, to counsel them.
Again – all the law would mean is that women considering an abortion who ask for counselling would receive counselling not from people who may have, it is reasonable to suppose (and I gather this is all that bias means in law), an interest in her having the abortion.
I am of course an ass who doesn’t close html tags. Sorry. And I should have gone and read the whole of the proposed bill, but when considering sending in a guest post on this subject I concluded I didn’t have time to do the necessary reading. Anyone who knows better please correct me.
Excellent comment Berenike.
What it would rule out is the highly dubious practice of counselling being provided by bodies who make money from carrying out abortions, or who have an interest in pushing them.
Indeed, the preferred providers of counselling will now be people who have strong beliefs against abortion.
Very few people who do not provide abortions offer any neutral counselling, or counselling in favour of abortions.
No. Nononono. From what I read on Frank Field’s blog (I am kicking myself for not having written this stupid thesis earlier, then I could take the time to research this and write it up properly), the bill will mean that local councils will be (perhaps someone already is – NHS? Councils? I don’t know) required to make counselling services available to women who request them. Counsellors are, I believe, governed by a professional body or bodies. You can’t just decide you are good at talking with people in stressful situations and apply for a job as a counsellor.
Pro-life organisations offer helplines and whatnot to women considering abortion on their own money – I’m not aware of *any* who have a government contract for this sort of thing (perhaps LIFE, but their non-directive counselling is considered unacceptable by most pro-lifers). This amendment deals only, exclusively, with what bodies can be approved as providers of “state” services.
I should say I think that while I am glad that someone has noticed this clash of interests – why isn’t the Taxpayer’s Alliance saying “hang on, something fishy here?”, and it would at least have, perhaps, given people in fragile emotional states a little more breathing space, I can’t see what’s so pro-life about it. Which means the mass hysteria is really giving me to think.
Even if your comment, TJW, was true, and I do not accept that it is, why should such beliefs be given less weight than the beliefs of those who believe that human life can be eliminated and flushed down a sluice?
This is a value judgement, and I have not seen anywhere a good reason why one person’s values should be given greater weight than another’s.
It sounds very much like you are a tolerant liberal, who will allow others to say what they want, so long as you agree with their sentiments.
I,m neither for nor against abortion,but Ialways say to the pro abortionists I bet your glad your mother wasnt in favour [ when i was a young man many years ago ,i impregnated a young lady who wanted to commit suicide rather than have an abortion or a baby, it was a very traumatic few weeks till she had an abortion
Forgive me if my maleness is present , but surely the matter of choice about what a woman does with her own body , cannot be solved without there being women to have the choice . we all came from the womb of a mother , and it seems reasonable to suggest that as a group of people , all women have come from wombs of females .
Ergo in order to have the choice in the first place , someone else must of chosen to keep you , rather than abort you . the female who begot you , must also had some conscious activity to do so , death to the mother means that the baby cannot be expelled from the womb into life , but must be cut open , if it is still living . To argue against abortion in cases of medical crisis is to eliminate for those concerned the choice of their personal life or personal death , However much the baby concerned will be devoid of liberty in that aspect . As this pertains to the change in the law , Abortion advice is too be given by those who do not have a interest in Providing abortion , which is as sensible as limiting the teaching of religion by Religious Cults and sects . i.e very .
But you’re missing the point. Everyone who offers counselling about abortion without offering the service, counsels against it.
But TJW, anyone offering counselling on unwanted pregnancy who provides an abortion service has an inbuilt tendency to push abortion as the solution to the unwanted pregnancy.
I will nail my colours to the mast right away. I believe that life starts at conception. From this flows my view that abortion is no less than murder of an unborn child.
I do not take on this illogical argument that it is a woman’s right to choose what happens with her body all the time. Except for cases of rape, the woman has chosen to have sex. she simply wants to choose to avoid the consequences of her action, the pregnancy. Now have we seen this morality elsewhere in the recent past, like in the criminal justice system, innit.
Given that there is a shortage of infants available for adoption and given that Britain has an aging population, perhaps it might be better for society if more unwanted pregnancies were carried to term and the children adopted, rather than ending in abortion.
Wow, what exactly do you think 9 months of unwanted pregnancy would do to a woman? And you think that using these women as some sort of milch cow would be ok because it would feed a need for adoption and replace an ageing population? It seems more like human farming to me.
It is better for me if I do not pay any tax or National Insurance, but it is better for the country if I do. Applying Gladiolys’ thinking, I should be able to not pay tax. I know, let’s abolish all tax and increase the amount we raise through the National Lottery, which is a purely voluntary tax, generally paid by those who can least afford it. Just so you know, that comment about the National Lottery was tongue in cheek.
Humans have the facility to decide whether they will have sex or not, unlikew farm animals who have sex when they are in season or may even be artificially brought into season to have more offspring than they would have naturally. It is the situation where a person is given an easy way out of dealing with the consequences of an action. But please note that I do not think the males should be getting away free with impregnating women. We should ensure that some equitable means is determined to ensure that the father pays for the upkeep of the child, and the maintenance of the mother at least until the child is of secondary school age, unless he can prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was hoodwinked into believing that the woman was totally unable to get pregnant. It is not human farming. It is called taking respnsibility for the consequences of your actions.
what?
I simply can’t understand what all the fuss is about. All Ms Dorries is asking that prior to agreeing to have an abortion, women should have access to genuinely independent advice. There are alternatives such as adoption or even bringing up a child single handed , There are difficulties with doing that, but there can also be difficulties following an abortion such as inability to conceive at a later date, and also an increased risk of mental health problems.
I have no strong views on abortion, although I would prefer the use of contraception in the first place. My views are, however, coloured by knowing a lady of my age who almost bursts into tears each time she sees us with our 2year old grandson. She had an abortion in her thirties, never managed to have another child, and realises that she could probably have brought up the child by herself, and if she had, she too might be a grandparent.
Ms Dorries is asking for yet another hurdle to be crossed in what should be a free transaction.
No she’s not.
Here’s Frank Field (it’s his amendment too, though you’d never know it).
Here’s a wee quote:
The aim of the amendment is to ensure that the advice and counselling services, which tax payers provide for women when considering abortion, are provided independently from the body that carries out the abortion.
Frank Field voted against an amendment to ban abortions after 18 weeks in 1990. Read what he writes – I think you’ll notice that he’s not exactly pushing a “limit abortions” line.
As it stands, women are sent on taxpayers’ money to be counselled by people paid by organisations which make money from performing abortions.
(Dogmatic Hypocritical Lunatics such as the Good Counsel Network receive no public money for counselling, or for supporting pregnant women with material and other difficulties through their pregnancies and afterwards.)
If Berenike is correct, and my hurried research on the subject suggests that he is, then the propaganda against Dorries is little short of libellous. Can anyone provide evidence of ‘yet another hurdle’ mentioned by AR? If not, the post should be reconsidered.
I’s a she!
I’m beginning to wonder about this whole abortion thing. I used to think most people who were for legal abortion were so because they cared for women in difficult situations. But here’s an amendment that (as far I can see, and no-one has shown otherwise at least on this blog) merely acts to prevent organisations that profit from abortion from taking taxpayer’s money to counsel those women considering abortion. You can see for yourselves the hysteria. What is provoking it? Does it not strike any of you as odd, to say the least?
My wife’s sister was a nurse in the Army, she told us of an abortion she participated in where the “foetus” took about an hour to die.
“free transaction” you say!
You want to do something I disagree with? OK, well you can do it, but jump through some hoops first. “Independent” advice. Yup, that will be £money money money. Oh, can’t afford that well on the waiting list for NHS funded services you go. But that will take you over 24 weeks. Sorry. Next.
Want to smoke tobacco, well you can, but you need some counselling first … and a licence … and a Dr to say it is OK ….
Want to drink alcohol, well off to the therapist you go …. etc etc.
I don’t want children, never have. Never had an abortion either but I can see the way the wind is blowing so got sterilised at age 39. My body, my choice. 1 week, 24 weeks or 41 weeks.
But it’s not just your body. Say you were 24 weeks pregnant and wanted to abort. You turn up at the hospital, the doctors lie to you and instead of killing the baby, they take it out and put it in an incubator. Now that the baby isn’t inside your body any more, does that give you the right to kill it? If not, then why do you still have the right to kill it if it spends another 10 weeks inside you?
Let’s put this another way. On the way to your abortion, you are hit by a bus and become unconscious. You are taken to hospital where you are cut open and the baby is taken out. Both you and the baby survive. You were intending not to have the baby, but now you are a mother through no fault of your own (unless you were driving dangerously). Do you still have the right to kill the baby?
Abortion is, as everyone has quite rightly said, a difficult issue. Anyone who says it isn’t sort of disqualifies themselves from meaningful participation in the debate, if you ask me.
Nadine Dorries’ proposal might SEEM reasonable, but there are warning flags. The first and most obvious of those is that it’s an idea supported by Nadine Dorries. The second is the limitation on who should give the counselling. The abortion providers are excluded, because, according to Ms Dorries, they have a financial conflict of interest. They can’t be trusted to give counselling because they’ll encourage women to have abortions so that they might profit thereby. Then they’ll laugh like mad scientists in an old Republic serial, presumably.
So, therefore, who should provide the “counselling” and what form should that counselling take? “Counselling” is a beautifully vague word which can mean anything from moral support, through factual advice and therapeutic intervention, to moralistic hectoring. I am unconvinced as to which type of counselling is being envisaged here. Dorries’ misleading press release claiming support from the BACP has not reassured me.
But I suppose the further point is why should counselling be required anyway. People make all kinds of serious decisions everyday without a half-wit MP saying they need counselling first. They get married, buy houses, get divorced, have children, submit bogus expenses claims… Dorries doesn’t reckon they should get counselling before those. But they need it for this. For something which she disapproves of. Funny that.
You missed most of the point Nadine Dorries is only ONE of the sponsors of the bill Frank Field is the other.
Other than that, any ‘counselling’ required should be independent and NOT given by those with any financial stake in the proceedings. Who those councillors are is a different topic altogether.
Hooray, someone else gets the simple point. And makes it more straightforwardly than I did.
Look at that amazing thing over there.
*points over everyone’s shoulders*
*runs away*
AR,
Disclaimer – I’m a male.
I agree with you entirely. Abortion has always been with the human race. I grew up in Central Africa where the old women all knew which roots and stuff to boil up to make a concoction which would induce a miscarriage.
Now that modern medical methods can remove a foetus from a woman’s body with relative safety, it is up to the pregnant woman, and her alone, to decide whether or not to avail herself of the abortion. Abortion should be a medical procedure available to a woman on demand. There should be no moralising, preaching, counselling or any other interference with the woman’s personal decision.
Where does life begin and end, and who has the right to kill?
Who has the right to decide these difficult questions on other people’s behalf? And your second question is clearly emotive.
Life begins at conception, obviously.
You only have a right to kill in self-defence.
A woman owns her body and has a right to terminate a pregnancy, but there is no right to kill the baby. It it can survive outside the womb it should be allowed to.
This is the ‘evictionist’ argument – the sensible middle ground!
Emotive? Not intended. I guess it just is. If it is.
Can I ask a stupid question? Why do these women get pregnant in the first place?
To answer those questions in turn:
1. Apparently so
2. Mostly by accident. Is there a “why” to accidents?
P-Naut99, you are bing disingenuous.
Women get pregnant, in all but one case recorded in history, by having a spermatazoum fertilise an egg in their fallopian tubes. Usually this is as a result of sex, although there are other ways of introducing the sperm.
In every case where someone has sex, there is a probablility of becoming pregnant. Given the large numbers of people who have sex every day, the laws of probability kick in and some become pregnant.
Perhaps the question Thaddeus J Wilson should be asking above is “Who has the right to demand that they be shielded from the consequences of their actions?” We would (mostly) demand that a drunken driver who killed a line of people queuing at a bus stop suffer consequences for his/her actions. Why is sex different? Now please be aware that I am not considering such cases as rape in this argument. Pregnancy as a result of rape is to me akin to diablement caused by the drunken driver I posited above.
I’m not being disingenuous. Very few unwanted pregnancies occur on purpose. “I want to get pregnant so I can abort it.” Seriously, who does that?
It might be through recklessness, or foolishness, or ignorance or any number of other reasons. It might even be through pressure from the other person who’s involvement is necessary for a pregnancy to occur.
Now, you are correct that all pregnancies throughout history have been as a result of sex. Even the exception you mention was fictional.
But people are shielded from the consequences of their actions every day. An injured rugby player isn’t left to fix his own broken leg because he knew the risks of playing rugby. Similarly, as a rule, pedestrians who get hit crossing the road aren’t left to bleed out on the pavement because everyone knows it would have been safer to use the subway.
So, loads of people get shielded from the consequences of their actions. All the time. Every day. I’m not sure why women who get pregnant are considered to be the exception.
Yes. Compassion needs to temper all one’s thinking.
The pain of the human condition won’t go away.
I think the problem with regard to pregnancy and abortion is that the political agenda people (Frankfurt School, Fabianista types) got in on the act to further a specific social control agenda and this has distorted the whole issue away from being primarily about compassion, either way (for the new life or mother).
But the drinker whose liver is knackered due to excessive alcohol consumption gets refused a transplant and I see that as a more comparable situation to someone who gets pregnant because they have consensual sex and for whatever reason they do not have effective contraception including the morning after pill. The only comparison that ties in directly with your examples is pregnancy as a result of rape.
Sorry, you do not agree that there has been artificial insemination by donor? Can you prove, beyond any reasonable doubt that Jesus’ conception was not immaculate? It may not have been repeated, but that is not the same.
Perhaps one of the reasons our society is in the state it is in is that too many people expect the state to pay to shield them from the consequences of their choices.
“So, loads of people get shielded from the consequences of their actions. All the time. Every day. I’m not sure why women who get pregnant are considered to be the exception.”
Because it’s not just the woman’s life to consider, is it? Unlike most other instances of ‘shielding from consequences’.
Almost 20 years ago, I accidentally impregnated a lady with whom I was having a relationship – I say ‘accidentally’ because a viral condition had inhibited her contraceptive pills, unknown to either of us at the time.
I had always been an unconditional supporter of abortion but, faced with the real emotions of the issue, I found it far harder than I had ever imagined. We genuinely agonised about the decision, weighing all the implications (both being married to others at the time, but childless) and envisaging the future circumstances of the child. I eventually concluded that I would accommodate whatever decision she reached, it being her body. As a result, a termination was undertaken, but with considerable regret and discomfort on both sides.
At about the same time, a neighbour was expecting a baby – whenever I have seen this child thereafter, I find myself imagining what our own child would have been like at a parallel age, each time revisiting the decision process and wondering if we got it right.
I still defend the right of any woman to make that decision about her own body, whether with formalised counselling or not, but please do not underestimate the difference between taking that position in principle and making that decision in practice – the latter is nowhere near as easy for either party.
I am appalled. If these women don’t care enough to prevent pregnancy in the first place, then I would suggest that they have other issues that need addressing far more importantly.
It has not been necessary to get pregnant by accident since 19 bloody 65, and don’t I ever know about that.
50 years on there is still an issue. And babies are still being killed.
Yer, right, I am anti abortion for me. The rest of the world can go do what it wants. Not my choice to decide what they will do. But the whole thing is seriously damaging for the female body. It creates a breed of women who never quite get over it. A breed of women who have a choice not to get pregnant in the first place.
While these may or may not be reasons to have an abortion, contraception can fail, people get raped, and people can be stupid, mentally ill or poor and not be able to raise their child as well as they would like.
My late wife got pregnant, after unprotected sex once, even though she had half an ovary and one fallopian tube, the ensuing male offspring is now 23 years of age, six feet one and a joy to behold, So personally if the woman,s fertile , i think nature will find a way
My posts are being placed incorrectly.
The Daily Mash has a good take on the mad Nads abortion situation
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/government-decides-more-unhappy-people-will-help-201108304247/
It has always been relatively easy to get an abortion in the UK in the early stages. A bottle of Gin and a scalding hot bath used to be the first line of attack. Then came the knitting needles, and in the right hand they were highly successful for thousands of women for thousands of years. They didn’t all die you know, some Abortionists were highly successful and highly prized.
“After that it becomes more risky for the mother”
Precisely – and at that point at which it becomes more risky, what does the medical profession do?
Hmmn, sorry, maybe, oh you’re over the limit……can’t help you.
And this is making abortion safer?
What do you think those women do when it ‘becomes more risky’?
Where do you think the sad little bundles found in skips come from? Where do you think the abandoned babies come from – someone just ‘forgot’ where they left it?
A trained chimpanzee can produce a safe abortion at 16 weeks, Its not rocket science.
You’re angry about someting and I’m still not clear what it is. Do you not think doctors should be involved in abortions? Once the foetus gets beyond a certain size it becomes harder and riskier to remove it, but the risks of backstreet abortion rise exponentially with later stage abortions – medical involvement becomes essential and you can find doctors willing to do later abortions
Sorry – this is in response to Anna at 17.17
Stabledoor,
I am angry at the hypocrisy.
If you listen to all the debaters, it is always about whether or not there ‘should’ be abortion – as though in some way it only exists courtesy of the medical profession and the law.
Then you have the right to life – arguing about when life begins and when or if you can legally snuff it out.
My point is simple – there has always been, for thousands of years, abortions – without all this debate.
If the law was simply intended to make all abortion less risky by being carried out by Doctors in hospitals, then the solution was simple – any woman who wanted an abortion walked up to the nearest Doctor and asked for – and got – one.
Instead we got all this nonsense and emotive argument as to when she could have one – and that is control, not abolishing risk!
Women don’t’ get an abortion in hospital now because they want one – they get one because the doctor says they can have one. They didn’t get all that from the abortionists – it was their risk, hand over your £100 and lets get on with it. No moralising.
And I say that as someone who would not dream of having an abortion, legal or not.
That is the way to go. Remove recourse to the public purse and let abortion become a purely commercial enterprise.
Might be fewer of ‘em if it was a free market and abortions cost money.
Yes. Because what the world definitely needs is more unwanted children born to poor people and/or more backstreet abortions.
True for any healthcare intervention. I know smokers pay more in tobacco tax than they cost, but many people who smoke aren’t the brightest of the bunch, and if they had to pay for their own lung cancer treatment then it might reduce the number of smokers. (Yes, I know most people on here who smoke will have considered the risks and decided it is still worth it, or think the risks are overrated, but the truth remains that most smokers know it is bad for them but can’t / don’t want to stop.)
What the world certainly doesn’t need is yet more people reared to believe life is disposable.
{ 1 trackback }