Ethics of abortion must include ethics of a woman’s right to choose
It filled my own heart with hope as I listened to what I remember as that odd, whooshy, under-water, really-fast-beating sound that signaled the beginning of a life, and the tiny speck visible on the screen of the ultrasound machine.
As someone who had trouble getting pregnant and staying pregnant I lived for those ultrasounds (and I had a lot of them) which, as time progressed, didn’t just involve the comfort of hearing the heartbeat but also working out the various limbs and their movement, and registering the amount of growth visible since the last scan.
For those precious few minutes in the obstetricians office you knew, because you could see and hear it, that the baby was in there safe, growing and alive. Immediately afterwards it was back to the worrying, but those appointments stand out as a sanctuary of high risk pregnancies.
So for me that tiny blob was a baby, as well as a foetus, from the off. As a friend who suffered a number of miscarriages once said to me: “You look at the pregnancy test stick that you’ve just peed on and within minutes of seeing that blue cross you practically have that child in college.”
In the reproductive roulette that exists for some women we were exceptionally lucky to end up with our two girls. For the first few years of their lives I didn’t even wish tothink about abortion.
My mind instinctively shut down on the issue and if compelled tothink about it I would admit, but only to myself, that I found it too horrific to contemplate.
I think, although I’m not sure, that I couldn’t take the personal intellectual leap between so recently having suffered an acute baby hunger to thinking about the actuality of abortion and the killing of a baby. I didn’t really speak about it too much then because I also felt guilty about the Irish women who found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy and in need of an abortion.
As it happens that periodcoincided with it being a quiet enough time in the saga that is abortion in Ireland and there was no referendum to make me face up to my own inner conflict.
As we also know there was so much shame, which remains to this day, slightly lessened now, that no one was telling me they’d had to travel, or had just travelled, for an abortion. All that was a dirty, dark secret; avoiding abortion, if you were of that mindset, was not difficult.
But as time moved on and my girls grew older I felt able to remind myself of the bigger picture, not least of my daughters’ reproductive rights, and those of all Irish women; those who were forced to travel and those who found themselves in life-threatening situations while pregnant and being cared for by medical teams in Irish hospitals who were operating under the chilling effect of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
Just as it was for so many other Irish people the death of Savita Halappanavar in October 2012 had a hugely galvanising effect on my thought process.
But still the intellectual argument continued in my head in terms of what exactly it is that an abortion does and to what.
If you are overjoyed to hear the heartbeat of your much-wanted baby at seven weeks how can you dismiss another pregnancy at a similar stage as just being a collection of cells, or a foetus only capable of life at a future stage.
If the pregnancy has progressed and there are limbs visible during ascan and you can see those move and you can feel kicks then to me there is a real live baby in there, even more so than the one that was there at seven weeks.
At that time in a wanted pregnancy the excitement centres around the potential of that life, the joy of being pregnant, particularly when feeling those kicks. Looking at the pictures of those ultrasound scans it looks and feels like a real live baby.
Since becoming a mother then it’s taken me quite a while to get my head around exactly where I stand. I hate abortion. I wish that no abortion ever had to take place.
I believe that an abortion does kill a baby, and the later that abortion happens the more horrible that it is. But a woman’s right to be in control of her reproductive rightsand to decide whether she wants to continue with a pregnancy trumps that for me.
It’s a fairly horrible realisation and not one that I like, but being honest to myself about it has made it easier to reach that conclusion.
I still struggle with the idea of late abortions, and I’m not even sure what I mean by the term late — but very definitely consider the UK’s limit of 24 weeks late.
However if I apply the same rigour to my thought process, remembering that I believe that a woman has a right to choose, because she is the one who is pregnant and bears the consequences of that pregnancy, well then that logic must apply, acknowledging that it challenges me even more.
I have absolutely no struggle with a termination taking place when a fatal foetal abnormality has been diagnosed.
It also helps my thought process to remember that the vast majority of abortions in the UK, for instance, happen at under 12 weeks, while just 2% take place after 20 weeks.
Whileaccepting that there is a baby involved, and therefore finding the idea ofstopping that baby’s heart beating awful, it is the idea of the greater pain inflicted on the woman, an adult human being, possibly with her whole life ahead of her, possibly with other children, possibly in an abusive relationship, possibly at a crucial point in her career, possibly thinking she had been too old to get pregnant, or possibly just feeling she simply is unable to continue with a pregnancy at that time, that makes me believe abortion should be an option to women everywhere in their home country.
I do not want to live in a country that does not allow terminations because It is unjust to expect a woman to continue with a pregnancy that she does not want. If you are discussing the ethics of abortions that has to include the ethics of a woman’s right to choose.
Between now and the end of May we are going to be bombarded with arguments on abortion from those who agree with me and those who most vehemently don’t — both attempting to recruit people to their way of thinking.
It will be hot and heavy. The best place to start is by having an honest think about it yourself.
All that was a dirty, dark secret; avoiding abortion, if you were of that mindset, was not difficult.
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