What all MPs should read before voting on the abortion time limit
Fraser Nelson 3:56pmI was reviewing the papers on the Marr sofa earlier with Jane Moore, one of my favourite columnists. Next week’s abortion vote came up, and she said she is pro-choice - but was persuaded of the need to reduce the time limit from 24 weeks to 20 weeks by a letter she received from a nurse involved in the procedure. Its contents, she told Marr, were unsuitable to be discussed on air. She later told me what it was – a description of how at 24 weeks the child is often strong enough to be alive – and then must be left to die on the side of an NHS sink until breathing his, or her, last. Jane wrote about this in a column for The Sun on 23 March 2005 and I can see why it changed her mind. It's not online, but here's an edited version. I would say that I’d like every MP to read it before voting, but I suspect those voting to keep the 24-week limit would not expose themselves to descriptions of what, precisely, they are supporting.
EVERY so often a letter arrives in a columnist's mailbag that throws a hand grenade right into the middle of a long-held view. That happened to me last week following my article in which I urged caution before lowering the time limit on abortion from 24 to 20 weeks. The letter came from a Registered General Nurse who works on a gynaecological ward that regularly deals with late terminations.She apologised for the "unpleasant and upsetting aspects" of her letter but felt her points needed to be said. I agree, and felt it also warranted a wider audience. Apparently, at 20 weeks, tablets can be given to kill the foetus prior to expulsion. But at 24 weeks it is sufficiently strong to survive the treatment and many are born with signs of life. "It is all too easy for people to picture a clump of cells or mush. People don't want to picture perfectly-formed miniature babies and I don't blame them, I was once the same," says Kay. "But having cut the umbilical cord on one who survived, then had to watch him gasp for breath for ten minutes on the side of a sink before he died, that sight will haunt me for ever." The reason given for that particular termination was that the mother's current boyfriend had a toddler son who might get jealous of a new baby. It took them 21 weeks to come to that conclusion. Kay adds: "I know of two nurses who went off work with stress as a result of their experience with late terminations. I suffered horrendous nightmares and guilt for months. The guilt comes from the fact that you as a nurse cut the umbilical cord and, as dramatic as it sounds, we felt like murderers." Kay doesn't believe in hounding or criminalising women who have to make this extremely tough decision owing to severe disability. Her misgivings are reserved solely for those who use termination as a form of contraception. Women who, up until last week, I hoped were few and far between. But, according to Kay, these terminations far outstrip those carried out because of fetal abnormality or genuine emotional distress. She says: "There are girls who come back five or six times demanding terminations and they get them. How can someone coming for their fifth termination be allowed to keep saying it is due to emotional distress? I should imagine in ten years' time the emotional distress of being allowed to have five terminations is going to take its toll. What is going on?"
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Comments
Jessica
May 18th, 2008 4:38pmOh God what a heatbreaking account of what is really going on. I agree about the MP's, that will vote for the status quo, they are too gutlees to read such an article. The thing is, support for lowering the time limit to 20 weeks is at it's strongest amongst women, unfortunately our out of touch MP's just don't get it.
Stan, UK
May 18th, 2008 5:00pmThis country is in such a sense of moral decline, radical changes are needed and soon.
TARA
May 18th, 2008 5:02pmWonder where Brown's moral compass on this issue is?
A humble toilet cleaner
May 18th, 2008 5:34pmThey can choose to hide this truth behind statistics, graphs and blown up medical reports but this is a description of infantile murder sanctioned by our cultural mechanisms. No amount of career success, wealth or other material distractions will change my opinion that the world I live in has become insane. If there is a God, then now is the time to either scorch the Earth, or intervene radically. We have most certainly become lost in the wilderness here and if there is no intervention then I can see a time not so far away when there will be very little humanity left in humanity.
In the words of Don McLean, it seems to me that "the three men I admire the most, the father, Son and the Holy Ghost", have indeed taken the last train to the coast.
Ray
May 18th, 2008 5:37pmOne day future generations will look back with utter incredulity that we, their forebears, could have allowed this 'Silent Holocaust' to contine for so long - in much the same way that we now look back with incredulity that our forebears could ever think it was okay to wrench Africans from their families and sell them as slaves.
Roy Simpson
May 18th, 2008 5:51pmAn article in yesterday's Daily Telegraph by M.P. Nadine Dorries mirrors Jane Moore's piece in The Sun.
Tiberius
May 18th, 2008 6:04pmIt's a shame it takes a graphic account to make some people realize just what abortion entails. The message to women who use abortion as a form of contraception should be, "Tough. You'll take the child to term and if you don't want it, there are hundreds of adoptive parents who do. Nine months of inconvenience for you does not entitle you end a viable life. Maybe it will teach you to take responsibility for your actions for the rest of your life".
TomTom
May 18th, 2008 6:27pmAbortions are taxpayer-funded through the NHS even though most are carried out in the private sector. How is it this procedure is NHS funded when life-aving procedures are rationed ?
A Theologian
May 18th, 2008 6:58pmI suspect that the cult of violence on the streets stems from the cult of institutionalised violence against the unborn. It's a simple equation. Welcome to the world of Herod where the guilty walk free and the innocent are murdered.
Perry
May 18th, 2008 7:14pmYes, it is ghastly. Yes, it has often horrible comebacks on the staff involved. But there is worse : the almost open-door invitation to those with little incentive to ignore the need to take care of themselves and their often casual sexuality.
Does that seem politically incorrect, elitist, moralising? I care not one jot.
But to produce a child that, initially at least is probably unwanted, unloved, and likely condemned to an early life of parlous affection by immature people must be the ultimate wrong. Again, this could be seen as moralising, relativistic. I set that aside, - as I do the gush and hypocrisy of the hand-wringing free-for-all brigades.
Fergus Pickering
May 18th, 2008 7:44pmLike most men who want a quiet life, and isn't that what most men want most of all, I tend to think, leave this one to the ladies. But you're right. This stuff is dreadful. And isn't it true, or did I just read it somewhere, that no terminations above sixteen weeks are actually performed by NHS doctors because they don't fancy doing it. And neither would I.
Tactician
May 18th, 2008 7:46pmTheologian and Toilet Cleaner, please remember that the strongest argument used to oppose lowering abortion age is that those who want to lower it are religious nutcases. I sympathise with your thoughts, but remember the left don't see this rationally. They see it as a battle of science v flat-earth bible-bashers. The moment a Christian cites the Bible in defence of his case, or uses religious metaphors, he effectively concedes defeat.
Commondog
May 18th, 2008 8:00pmUntil this horrendous practice is stopped, there can be no hope for our society, it will die of guilt.
How on Earth we were brought to this point just amazes me.
So many thousands of young people are not here today because they were murdered with the approval of the state, four decades and more it has been going on. How many millions of lost babies, and those in power warn us of the perils of our 'ageing society'.
There just isn't a word to describe such a situation.
Fraser Nelson
May 18th, 2008 8:22pmPerry - if a child is unwanted then adoption is the answer where couples longing to find newborns. People like David Miliband have to go to America to adopt a newborn because in Britain unwanted babies don't make it to the maternity ward anymore.
Frank
May 18th, 2008 8:24pmI'm a a right-wing, atheist male, father of two, with four grandchildren. I believe fervently in women's rights; but for pity's sake don't allow the abortion of poor little buggers who might otherwise have survived.
Danni
May 18th, 2008 9:04pmLate term abortion should only be allowed if the baby is going to be disabled in some way.
RMH
May 18th, 2008 9:28pmFrank says it best:
"I believe fervently in women's rights; but for pity's sake don't allow the abortion of poor little buggers who might otherwise have survived."
Perry
May 18th, 2008 9:40pmOh dear Fraser, thank you for your response, but this might lead to places better left undisturbed tonight. I simply note a possibility that, . . . .
mart
May 18th, 2008 9:42pm"Its contents, she told Marr, were unsuitable to be discussed on air."
Maybe discussing it on air is what is needed.
Ben Stevenson
May 18th, 2008 9:43pmWhy should disability be accepted as a justification for abortion? Is a disabled person's life not worth living?
If it is wrong to kill a foetus at 26 weeks, or 22 weeks, it should be wrong to kill a foetus with a disability at the same age.
Instead of abortion, parents of disabled children should be provided with better support to help them overcome any difficulties they face, from the government if necessary, but preferably from voluntary charities.
ted
May 18th, 2008 9:50pmSurely the fact that the baby is strong enough to survive is irrelevant.
Are you saying that because at 19 weeks and six days babies aren't strong enough to survive then it's ok to kill them. What kind of twisted logic is that?
Surely, either abortion is right or it is wrong, regardless of time. Don't they argue that an embryo has as much potential life as a foetus towards the end of term. A test that relies on whether we're capable of imagining a foetus in the form of a baby gasping for breath by a sink is not a particularly sophisticated one is it?
Mondo matto
May 18th, 2008 10:44pm... Meanwhile, in the room next door, a doctor is busily fiddling about with a test tube trying to magic up a baby for someone using IVF.
Liz Brown
May 19th, 2008 8:04amCompulsory sterilisation of these teenenagers or even the 20 somethings who go for a second abortion is the only answer
Stuart
May 19th, 2008 8:10amI don't think this article should affect anyone's view. Pro-choicers will still point to the methadone user who didn't know she was pregnant or the woman whose partner left her mid-pregnancy; pro-lifers will still point to examples of feckless girls who procrastinated or could not make their minds up.
In fact, the issue of when the foetus becomes 'viable' is irrelevant to the ethical question on abortion. If you believe that life begins at conception, you should oppose abortion however early or late it takes place. If you believe that the woman's power over her own body is paramount, you should allow her to have an abortion as close to term as possible.
Those are really the only positions that are internally logically consistent.
ACT
May 19th, 2008 12:39pmThe casual self-righteousness of Fraser in saying, 'I suspect those voting to keep the 24-week limit would not expose themselves to descriptions of what, precisely, they are supporting', is all too telling. So you think the people who disagree with you do so just because, unlike you, they can't be bothered to find out 'the facts'? My goodness, with self-certainty like that, and contempt for the reasonably thought-through opinions of other people, are you sure you haven't missed your true vocation? A true-believing New Labour minister of state circa 1998?
Ted has neatly summed up the disingenuous nature of this campaign: either abortion's wrong, or it's not. But even then, viability really isn't the hate-term some of you seem to think it is. The fact that a 5-to-6 month foetus can grasp for breath, before it's painful, ex vitro death is no more convincing an argument against legalised abortion than the wretched lives the earliest surviving premature babies can lead is - their permanent brain damage, their equally premature deaths &c.
Those of us don't see abortion as murder are at least consistent: those of you who seem to claim to believe that, it's murder after X weeks, but okay before then are rather harder to figure.
DW
May 19th, 2008 1:02pmBen Stevenson - But until the state does help to the extent that is honestly required, what is a mother to do, especially if she already has two or three other young children etc?
John Thomas
May 19th, 2008 2:36pmThe "Theologian" (May 18th) is obviously right. Street violence and killing is ultimately caused by the fact that at the "top" it is explicitly shown that killing is permissible. There can be no restoration of public morals, or improvement of the quality of life, until the government ceases to sanction killing, and show that life itself is of value. We live within the "Culture of Death" - government led.
Commondog
May 19th, 2008 6:51pmACT.
I'm consistent. Abortion is murder.
"The fact that a 5-to-6 month foetus can grasp for breath, before it's painful, ex vitro death is no more convincing an argument against legalised abortion..."
And 'we' are hard to figure?
THX1138
May 19th, 2008 10:11pmBoris' sister got it right for me.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_johnson/article3952768.ece
Life support
May 23rd, 2008 3:48pmProctect all life that we have been given.
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