Defending the indefensible

Editor's note. Professor David Paton is chair of industrial economics at Nottingham University. The following essay appeared in the Oxford Forum--an Oxford University students publication.

*************************************************************************

Professor David Paton responds to Dr Ellie Lee's article defending late abortions. Dr Lee argued in the last issue of the Forum that calls for a lower legal time limit on abortions ignored possible practical and emotional effects, and that technological advances improving the life chances of premature babies have been overstated

Last month's article by Dr Ellie Lee defending the legal status of late abortions was revealing for all sorts of reasons, but perhaps most of all for the unwitting illustration of how the pro-abortion establishment has become increasingly stuck in an out-dated mindset that has left them quite out of touch with both medical science and public opinion.

Dr Lee correctly notes the fact that the voices being raised against abortion come not only from the traditional pro-life movement but increasingly from doctors and journalists who have hitherto been active pro-abortion campaigners. She might have added that the strongest voices now being raised in protest are those of women who have been through abortion themselves.

The presence of all these new voices in the abortion debate seems to have taken many pro-abortion campaigners by surprise. Most of Dr Lee's article was spent trying to persuade us that these people are simply wrong. It seems to me that pro-abortion campaigners might more usefully reflect on why this turnaround in the abortion debate has happened in the first place.

I believe that the roots of the change come from three sources: (i) advances in foetal medicine that highlight philosophical contradictions in the abortion debate; (ii) advances in our scientific knowledge of the impact of abortion on women's mental health; (iii) an insistence of the pro-abortion campaign that they must resist even those modest restrictions on abortion that have large popular support. I will discuss these points in turn.

(i) Advances in foetal medicine

As Dr Lee notes, many people, including some who are otherwise in favour of legal abortion, have been deeply affected both by the new 4-D ultrasound scan images of the foetus in the womb as well as by recent reports of foetuses showing signs of life after undergoing a late abortion. Some medical personnel have been particularly upset and not unnaturally have become increasingly unwilling to participate in abortions.

In her article, Dr Lee just dismisses such people as being emotional and irrational. Her solution to the problem of aborted babies being born alive, articulated without any apparent sense of irony, is that doctors should become more efficient at making sure the unborn baby is killed before delivery "by the injection into the fetal heart of potassium chloride". The logic may be perfect: if people are uncomfortable with foetuses being born alive, let's just make certain they are born dead! However, it demonstrates a complete lack of awareness of why people feel so emotional about this. When an aborted baby is delivered alive, the reality of what is happening is brought home in a visual and dramatic way: this is not just a lump of cells or a piece of tissue but an individual human being with its own heart and brain. The aborted baby struggling for life emphasises to medics the contradiction that they are expected to try to save the lives of babies the same age as foetuses that are being killed by abortion.

The emotional response is, of course, just the start of the process. We then have to face the deeper philosophical question. It is difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a satisfactory ethical rule that justifies banning an abortion at, say, twenty-three weeks, but not one at seventeen weeks.

One solution is to agree with most pro-abortion groups who argue that abortion should be a legal right up to the moment of birth. Indeed this is what the current UK law allows in the case of babies thought to have a disability. However, this is itself problematic. Why should a baby born prematurely at, say, thirty-six weeks of pregnancy be protected by law, when a baby at the same gestation can still be killed by abortion? Some philosophers recognise this inconsistency and justify the killing of disabled babies for some time after birth. For example, in his book Practical Ethics, Professor Peter Singer argues in favour of infanticide on the grounds that "birth does not mark a morally significant dividing line. I cannot see how one could defend the view that fetuses may be 'replaced' [sic] before birth, but newborn infants may not be."

Faced with the realisation that it is an ethical contradiction to justify abortion whilst opposing infanticide, it is unsurprising that those whose moral conscience is first awakened by an emotional response to late abortion tend eventually to move in the direction of opposing abortion at any stage.

There are many other examples in which images and real events cause an emotional response that serves a useful purpose. We know that poverty and famine are terrible things, but sometimes it takes a film of babies starving to death to spur us into action. The emotional response caused by such images is in no way irrational but a necessary reaction that helps us to face up to and act upon the truth. Put simply, it is part of what makes us human.

(ii) Impact of abortion on women's mental health

The past five years have seen the publication of a steady flow of papers in top scientific journals providing solid, unequivocal evidence on the adverse consequences that abortion has on some women. This work has been published by scientists such as David Reardon, Priscilla Coleman and David Fergusson who have wide ranging opinions on abortion. For example, Dr Fergusson describes himself as a "pro-choicer" yet his research published last year in the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology found that over forty-two per cent of women having an abortion suffered depression, nearly double the rate of those who had never been pregnant and thirty-five per cent higher than those who had chosen to continue a pregnancy. Even taking into account a range of other possible factors, such as previous mental health, he found that abortion had a significant adverse impact on the psychological health of many women.

In the past, pro-abortionists have tended to dismiss women who claim to have suffered from their abortion experience as being an insignificant minority or the stooges of the pro-life movement. The weight of scientific evidence is such that these assertions are no longer credible. As a consequence, women who have had abortions have become more confident in questioning whether legalised abortion really does promote women's rights.

In the same week that Dr Lee's article was published, such women were publicly testifying to their experience of abortion on high streets across England under the banner "Silent No More". As one woman speaking in Nottingham last weekend explained, "for forty years our voices have not been heard in the abortion debate, but they are silent no more. Women deserve better than the death of their child as a solution to an unplanned pregnancy, and until they are no longer encouraged, through abortion, to suffer the physical, and psychological consequences, we will speak the truth: abortion hurts women."

(iii) Resistance to modest abortion restrictions

The third factor that is helping to shift the terms of the debate has been the rigid insistence of the pro-abortion movement that they must resist modest changes to the abortion law that seem just to be common sense to the general public.

Dr Lee's opposition to limiting late abortions in the UK is one example of this. Another interesting case study is the debate over partial birth abortion, an issue which has recently come to a head in the USA.

Partial birth abortion is a particularly gruesome late abortion procedure in which the entire foetus is delivered except the head. A tube is inserted into the skull to remove the brain, the skull is then collapsed and the now-dead infant is pulled out. For the past ten years, state and federal laws have been proposed that would outlaw this procedure and, unsurprisingly, these laws have attracted massive public backing from Republicans and Democrats including many who generally support legal abortion.

The initial response of the pro-abortion movement was to argue against a ban on the grounds that the procedure was used in only a handful of "acute" cases. When investigative journalists exposed this as entirely false, the movement shifted to arguing that partial birth abortion should not be banned because alternative procedures for performing late abortions were likely to be even more painful for the foetus. As with Dr Lee's suggestion regarding babies who are born alive after abortions, there is a certain internal logic to this argument. However, in the eyes of the general public, it merely serves to emphasise how out of touch the pro-abortion movement is with the experience and concerns of everyday people. Indeed, just last month the US Supreme Court finally came down in favour of a federal ban on the partial birth abortion procedure.

Misguided attempts by pro-abortionists to oppose bans on late abortions or on the partial-birth abortion procedure have perhaps done more than anything to propel people in the direction of a pro-life point of view. When pro-abortion groups vocally defend the indefensible of late term abortions, people start to question whether there is any ethical limit to the pro-abortion position at all.

In contrast, for years the pro-life movement has been quietly backing up its efforts to attain legal protection for the unborn by providing alternatives for women in difficult pregnancies and offering care for those who have had abortions. Of course this work is ignored by most of the media who unfailingly paint an inaccurate and biased picture of those who are against abortion. In the end, however, the mix of compassion and practical help for women together with an ethically consistent argument against abortion that is based on human rights is very compelling for open-minded people.

The abortion debate in the UK appears to be at a critical point. Whilst pro-abortion groups continue to defend the indefensible, the truth of the humanity of the unborn and damage that abortion can do to women becomes harder and harder to deny.

Please send any comments to Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.