I’ve never understood why so many people get so worked up about the subject of whether or not to allow abortions. I understand everybody’s arguments, but I’m really not sure why particularly the anti-abortion crowd are so unyielding and passionate about their case. It’s the unwillingness to look at the matter with a compassionate but still rational perspective that I don’t understand. 

So, when I read that Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has recently launched her ‘20 reasons for 20 weeks‘, it immediately put me onto the sceptical footing, but I was hopeful about seeing the interesting debates fly about (is there anybody actually on Nadine Dorries’ side?). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that those arguing the case for a abortion limit are antediluvian or anything, I just don’t quite see why they are so passionate about interfering with other people’s choices. Unfortunately, it turns out very few of her reasons are real reasons at all – they just provide fodder for recognising how not to create a good argument. Take reason 1, for example, since we might as well start at the start:

Public, parliamentary and medical opinion is changing on late abortion. 63% of MPs, two thirds of GPs, nearly two thirds of the public and more than three-quarters of women support a reduction in the 24-week upper age limit.
or reason number 9:
Leading public figures including Opposition leader David Cameron are calling for a cut to at least 20 weeks.

Is it me, or are these not actually reasons at all? Surely, they are effects – if it’s true that support is increasing, then the reason would be whatever it is that’s convincing people to support the cause, not just the fact that they are supporting it. Popularity is not a judge of quality – most people use Microsoft software, after all. A lot of the other ‘reasons’ are simply appeals to people’s emotional outlook rather than their intelligence – “Mothers first feel their babies kick at 19 weeks in a first pregnancy and at 17 weeks in a later pregnancy” is a classic example of this: in the first place, what has the mother feeling the baby kicking got to do with abortion? On top of that, if kicking starting at 17 weeks is such an important reason for reducing the abortion cutoff, why is Nadine Dorries MP not advocating a reduction to 17 weeks?  She says that “lowering the limit to 20 weeks for normal babies will save almost 2,300 young lives per year”, but surely those 2,300 people would simply get an abortion before 20 weeks, instead.

Probably the most compelling argument for reducing the abortion limit, appearing in the initiative as reasons 2 and 4, is that it is now possible for a foetus to be viably born at 21-22 weeks, in some circumstances. Dorries points out that this leads to relatively absurd circumstances of doctors battling to save the life of a premature baby, then moving to another wing and terminating a foetus that has been gestating for exactly the same amount of time. Of course, the difference is that the premature baby’s parents actually want to love and care for him, where the mother of the aborted foetus evidently does not wish to. Beyond this, there’s the problem of technology creeping up on us. Scientific progression has allowed doctors to save the lives of babies born up to 20 weeks premature, and that’s an incredible achievement, but ultimately one day, doctors and scientists will be able to  artificially complete an entire gestation – if ANY embryo is viable, do we simply go back to the archaic ban on abortion? At some point, an arbitrary limit needs to be decided upon, and does the 20 reasons campaign really have any significant basis on which to say that this arbitrary limit should be 20 weeks as opposed to 24? Why not 16? Why not 8? At some point, we have to stop.

Now is the point in the argument where I can bring my personal anecdotal opinions into the fray. I was 19 when my then girlfriend (now wife) found out she was pregnant. She had said that she didn’t want a baby before university and if she became pregnant before she was 20 then she would have an abortion. Faced with the reality of that, I began thinking about what my real thoughts were concerning abortion. I realised that I had always wanted children and if she were to have an abortion it would drive a wedge between us from which we might never recover – it would be a choice for her between having me and the baby, or neither of us. When I then asked her if she planned to have the pregnancy terminated, to my surprise and delight she responded “are you joking? It’s my baby!”

That experience, and subsequently having the joy of becoming a father and watching my daughter grow up, made me realise that I would never ever ever want one of my children aborted. What’s more, I’m not sure I could muster up any great amount of respect for anyone who did have an abortion arbitrarily or without good reason. The idea of having the opportunity to bring a life into the world, nurture it and watch it grow, and then turning down that opportunity is shocking to me – I don’t understand why anyone would even consider it.

It all boils down to this, though: I wouldn’t begrudge them their opportunity to make their own decision. We’re not here to save people from themselves, we’re here to let them chose their own destiny, however much we may disagree with them or lose respect for them in the process.