It's nowhere in the "About" on this site, nowhere in the posts, this blogger has hitherto left the issue alone. Until now. Worred about powerful lobbies? No. It's just a bit personal, that's all.My position is that I have no position.
Tim Worstall comments on Amnesty's decision to back Woman's Choice in certain circumstances and that it has no right to broaden its charter to take in other issues - it's hard to argue with him on this.
Abortion?
Though the man hates it, should he ask her not to? I don't mean rant and rave and tell her it's evil and all that because she can deal with that more easily, I think.
No, I mean asking her quietly not to kill our child.
I imagine that's far more traumatic for her. Did I do wrong by not asking? I felt she knew how I felt about it but I didn't say anything. Was I abetting a felony?
And the next day, when she went off there in the taxi alone because she wanted it that way, did I do wrong?
And when she allowed me to see her the following day and I held her in my arms, did I do wrong? Was I condoning a crime and telling her that it was quite OK to do that every time now?
I have no answers to these questions. She was 34.
Abortion is a 'sticky' subject. People that support it seem to think that it is simply a choice for a woman and has nothing to do with life for a child.
ReplyDeleteBeing pro-life, I think the 'choice' is whether to keep the child or to give it up for adoption. Or the 'choice' was to have sex or not (yes people do get raped, that does not make the child anything less than a child).
Were YOU wrong for holding her after? No, compassion isn't wrong, even if she does something you can't support and don't believe in, you have to rely on YOUR compassion to help YOU through it. If that means helping her through it, then that is what you do. You would also NOT be wrong for NOT holding her after she killed your child.
the thing is that any gesture is pointless after it. I agree with you it's wrong. Certainly after a certain point. Ans some women [providing they're healthy of course and there's a good chance of survival for both] choose to have the child, e.g. Ruthie and she has a tough life but a lot of joy in Little C.
ReplyDeleteIt's a tough call.
OK.
ReplyDeleteI was 23 when my the partner had an abortion.
I asked her not to, begged her no to. I told her that it made us murderers of our own child.
I still went with her to the clinic on the day.
I can still remember, I went down the road for some fags and had to go past some protestors by the gate.
My heart sank- I agreed with them.
After we went home, we could hardly speak to eachother.
I spent a lot of time discussing what had happened with my priest- needed reassurance that I wasn't complicit to murder of my own child.
I don't blame her any more, though for years I did, and I carried that hatred aginst the world and a society that allowed and encouraged it.
Probably only really got over it a couple of years ago.
again, that was mainly thanks to the support of the church.
I do blame society, though. It should not have been permitted, merely because it sttod in the way of career. She was not to blamer for taking the option open. It shouldn't have been open.
People that support it seem to think that it is simply a choice for a woman and has nothing to do with life for a child.
ReplyDeleteOr that a bunch of cells which have yet to achieve sentience count as life.
Personally, I'd like to see the number of abortions drop - through better sex education and changes in social attitudes. But I don't have a problem with abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.
No, you did now rong and I'm glad you held her in your arms. It's a very difficult one, this. And now we have the Catholic church saying it's wrong even after rape. I think that is heartless. I wrestle with the issue , myself: as an adopted child, as I think I've said before, I might not be here if abortion on demand had been available in the 50s. Then I watch the desperate women in "Vera Drake" and I feel for them, too.
ReplyDeleteNo woman has an abortion lightly but only when she thinks there is no other option.I can't imagine giving a child upn for adoption and I am sure that accounts for many single young mothers who thought thye could, realized they couldn't and was forced in to alife of drudgery and pverty.
ReplyDeleteThere HAS to be abortion and I htink we have to consider that the peron is in the here and now has 5o come first- as awful as that sounds.I just don't think there are any simple or right or even pleasant options.
As LOrd Nazh says, the real answer lies in sex education and responsibility of both partners .
The closest I have been to this is our friends in Singapore from Australia, who determined through testing that the child they were having was Downs Syndrome or something like that. They had the pregnancy terminated and she had to give birth to a fairly full term child. It was a very hard decision for them personally. They had a little memorial service in the park, named the child and had it cremated.
ReplyDeleteThey went on after this to have a healthy son.
I think that these decisions have to be left to the parent(s) and we should support them personally even if we disagree. I don't really have much of an issue with early term abortion.
I try to be pro-choice in my views but for myself I could not abort a child. Once you have had a child, even terminating that early bunch of cells which could become a son or a daughter just like the ones you have would be impossible for me, unless it was said to be totally deformed or similar.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the rights of the father in these cases, there is no obvious solution to me. I do think to have an abortion (or not) is a decision that should be made after discussion and with both parties in agreement. If one is not (it could be either party) it becomes extremely difficult. I have no answers.
To give comfort in this situation was not wrong, perhaps not asking her to consider your wishes was wrong, in retrospect. To be honest, I'm sure you had no idea what to do and went with the slightly easier option of not saying anything.
One thing that always upsets me when I see statistics that say there are more abortions than live births in this or that institution or city, or state, or country. For some reason that makes me very sad.
jmb
As an illegitimate child, I think as welshcakes does, would I be here if abortion had been legal then?
ReplyDeleteAs a mother who miscarried at an early stage but suffered serious but largely unexpressed grief, I wonder if some of the women who have an abortion don't realise how they will feel until afterwards.
I suppose I don't agree with abortion on demand, abortion because the alternative doesn't fit in with an enjoyed lifestyle, but I can't be so completely down-the-line as to say absolutely no abortion. Which I suppose I should if I'm being logical and saying abortion is murder. But when did logic take charge? There's right and wrong and there's compassion and forgiveness.
You were quite right in your actions to hold and support her, james
Liz and Welsh: love your positions :)
ReplyDeleteI often wonder if the pro-abortion people ever sit around and wonder what the world would be like if their parents had the same position they do (before they were born that is)
I agree that abortion should be available in cases of rape, incest or where the woman's health is at serious risk, wherever that may be in the world. Here though,and wherever the circumstances are not carefully defined, 'abortion on demand' does mean that some less thoughtful women will continue to use abortion as a form of contraception. That may have been more common before the advent of the morning-after pill, but it seems evident from the statistics that its availability has not impacted positively on the abortion rate, which continues to rise.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I don't think it would be so terrible a burden for a woman to be compelled by law to carry a child if the father wanted the child and intended to take and to raise it himself. It's not only the woman's child, why, therefore, should a man not be able to choose life for his own child?
When it comes to abortion it's so much not 'a man's world', pregnancy can create a vantage point for cruel women who enjoy taunting their men with threats of abortion, or with tales of the babies they have already aborted without their knowledge. It's one area in which the man has no power and no final word, making abortion a very effective means for an angry or dissatisfied woman to wreak vengeance. Whatever the motive may be, the abortion will invariably be justified in socially acceptable terms, the woman will have given it 'a great deal of thought' and done a lot of 'soul searching' - vengeance is not normally offered as a reason, so no-one can know how often it may be up there with all those more acceptable sounding reasons, but it undoubtedly features some of the time. A woman is not always fully conversant with her own motives because the truth can sometimes be too hideous to contemplate - but for some women, abortion is the ultimate power trip as she knows there's absolutely nothing the man can do to save his child.
Men tend to respond in what they find to be the most appropriate way at the time; society succeeds pretty well in conditioning the majority into the belief that 'only an insensitive b*****d who had already carelessly made a woman pregnant would then not support her in whatever difficult decision she had to make...' Also, most people believe the woman's right to make decisions regarding her own body is paramount - it's a distortion, as a pregnant woman no longer has only her own body to respect and to consider, but it's one that will continue to serve well the purposes of those who tend to regard abortion as a human right.
If men had the right of veto there would be a lot less unwanted pregnancies; no man has a hope of that ever becoming law, not only because the basic premise would be dismissed as being unlawful and against the woman's rights, but because it would be entirely unenforceable.
I've been reading the comments on both sides with great interest, trying to formulate in my mind where to stand on this. They've all been cogent arguments and somehow I'm going to try to condense them into a new post. Thanks, people.
ReplyDelete