Six million babies have been aborted in Britain since 1967. Given what we now know about foetal and maternal suffering, can't we rethink, asks Breda O'Brien.
For many years, I have opposed the use of graphic imagery in campaigning against abortion. I used to occasionally wear a badge that portrays the perfectly formed feet of a 12-week-old foetus. I stopped when a friend who had had an abortion and who had regretted it deeply, said that the badges hurt no one but women like herself, who were already suffering enough.
If such an inoffensive image could cause such pain, I reasoned, there is no justification in using shocking pictures. They also deny dignity to the little human beings depicted, in the same way as a shot of a body floating in the Liffey denies dignity to the deceased person. I have a particular dislike of images of mutilated foetuses on display in public places where children have no choice but to see them.
Channel 4 television's programme last Wednesday, called Abortion - What We Need to Know, screened incredibly graphic footage of abortions and their aftermath. Carnage was the only word to describe a lingering shot of fragile, almost translucent, but perfectly-formed arms, chests and legs of foetuses aborted at 12 and 13 weeks. Even at that early stage the foetus has to be dismembered before being removed from the womb. It was like looking at the aftermath of the most obscene violence.
Despite my long-held opposition, I couldn't help wondering what impact they would have on the outcome of an opinion poll about legalising abortion, if people viewed them beforehand. Not that anyone should be forced or tricked into viewing this. I stopped watching long before the shots had ended, too heartsick to continue. Yet they portray the reality of abortion.
Some people are obviously immune. Dispatchesinterviewed a Marie Stopes Clinic surgeon who carries out late-term abortions on a constant basis. He was willing to describe what an abortion consists of, and to allow one to be filmed, but not to show the foetus. He does not go into the details of what is involved with the women about to undergo the procedure because it is too upsetting. The programme obtained the footage of the abortions from what it termed an "American propaganda film", but had the images confirmed as authentic by independent obstetricians.
One can only speculate at the surgeon's motives for giving the interview and being so frank in the first place. He seemed like a man who had decided long ago that the concerns of the woman trumped any concerns or rights of the foetus. Yet as he finished yet another abortion, there was an air of weary sadness about him.
Two pro-choice advocates were more trenchant. They said that it was patronising to assume that women do not know what is going on, and of course they know how developed the foetus is, but are in such distressing situations that they cannot contemplate continuing with a pregnancy.
Being old-fashioned enough to still identify with much of the best of feminism, I have always felt that a world that does not celebrate and support women's difference from men, that they carry, give birth to and nurture with their bodies new human beings, is a world that still sees women as inferior to men. A society that is not supportive of pregnant women tends to be a society that is not too supportive of children and their profound need for parental love either.
Don't women deserve better than abortion? And if they are in horrendous situations, do they not deserve support and care in helping to resolve their difficulties, rather than having to resort to having fragile new lives sucked from their wombs as some kind of solution? Fathers, too, can suffer, although this is under-acknowledged and poorly researched.
Dispatcheswas aired in the context of a furious debate in Britain about lowering the legal limit for abortion. If a foetus is handicapped, sometimes even in minor ways, abortion is legal virtually until birth. Otherwise, the limit is 24 weeks. The programme showed a happy little girl born at 22 weeks, and also that pre-term babies in America have much better survival rates than in Britain.
Foetal pain is another big issue. Until relatively recently, it was considered that a foetus's nervous system was too immature to register pain.
A pioneering researcher, Dr Sunny Anand, helped to demonstrate that premature babies do experience pain, and now pain relief is routine for surgical procedures. He believes that it cannot be ruled out that foetuses experience pain as early as 17 or 18 weeks, although he was dismissed by British doctors. His weary response is that there are none so blind as those who will not see.
As the Canadian Medical Association Journal editorialised when criticised for publishing data that showed that post-abortion, women suffer negative psychological outcomes, "we cannot toss out data any time we don't like their implications". Faced with evidence of foetal pain, some doctors spoke of anaesthetising unborn children before abortion. It seems macabre to respect the right not to feel pain, but not the right to life.
As part of the process of looking at the legal limit for abortion, Prof Patricia Casey was called this week before a select committee of the British House of Commons to give evidence on psychological outcomes for women.
There is a growing body of research that abortion leaves one dead, but quite often, another wounded - the mother. Disorders including depressive illness, substance abuse and self-harm have been identified.
Given that the majority of women agonise over the decision to abort, and few choose it with anything other than a heavy heart, can we not progress enough as human beings to see another way forward? Six million babies have been aborted in Britain since it was legalised 40 years ago, virtually equivalent to the entire population of Ireland, North and South.
Can we not see that what began as choice has become carnage, and stop pitting the rights of the mother against the rights of the child, but support both? A society that supports women in difficult circumstances is a humane society. One that shrugs, and says abortion is always there as a back-up, is a society verging on barbarism.