Catholics preach against abortion, bears seen heading towards woods.
Abortion is in the news again. This week, Cardinal Keith O’Brien delivered a noteworthy sermon at St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh. Railing against the increase in abortions in Scotland, he called upon universities to teach that abortion is wrong, for a “boycott” of politicians who fail to legislate against it, and for “a generation” of doctors to stop performing the operation. He likened the abortion-rate to being like “two Dunblane massacres, every day.”
Of course, the Cardinal’s dramatic outburst might not mean very much, in the grander scheme of things. O’Brien’s pretty chippy when it comes to many of the more inflammatory issues of the day. He may be pro-gay priest, but he’s anti also gay marriage and anti gay adoption, likened sex education for children to “abuse”, and has called upon Muslims to “apologise” for 9/11. And of course, pronouncing against abortion is pretty much what you would expect a Catholic archbishop to do.
Given that it’s a key part of Catholic belief, it’s amazing all Catholic priests don’t give sermons like this every day. It’s kind of their job.
Perhaps it’s a measure of how long British Catholics have been quiet on the matter that Cardinal O’Brien’s sermon is so inflammatory. He’s having to make up for lost time. However, O’Brien’s outburst does come at a time when there is something of a sea-change in the air over abortion.
Whilst Britain is vastly pro-choice, with only 3% wanting to see a total ban on abortion, the anti-abortionists have been emboldened by the success of their contemporaries in America - where total ban support runs at 22%. Campaigners are stepping up their activity here, in time for the 40th anniversary of legalisaiton, in October. In the last eight months, three bills have been tabled in the Commons, seeking to curtail womens’ access to termination.
The forthcoming Human Tissue and Embryos Bill is expected to be used by pro-life MPs to tack on abortion-limitation clauses. And, as Libby Purves noted in her column last month, an “unprecedented number” of doctors are opting out of terminations, dismayed by the year-on-year increase in operations. A great deal of the reason why anti-abortion sentiment is allowed to hold ground is that the abortion debate is just that – an ideological, religious or socio-political debate on abortion. It’s very rarely discussed in terms of personal, everyday experience, despite record numbers of women – 186,416 in 2006 – having them.
Women – always loathe to talk about the more visceral elements of female reproductive physicality, such as the reality of menstruation, childbirth or menopause – are too ashamed, or unconfident in their reception, to discuss their terminations – even with friends, or partners. This brings about the curious circumstance that, whilst pretty much everyone in Britain must have someone dear to them – mother, sister, daughter, wife, friend, aunt, niece, grandmother – who has had an abortion, the chances of them actually discussing it with their more conservative elders, or menfolk, are remote.
Subsequently, we have a climate where anti-abortionists can discuss abortion as if it’s something that “they” do, over “there”; rather than the reality - that has, in all likelihood, been a calm, rational, well-thought-out act, which has statistically occurred very close to home.
This reluctance amongst women to discuss their terminations was made real to me last month, when I wrote a piece in The Times. In it, I mentioned how, having had two children, I had an early abortion when I found out I was pregnant with a third, and hadn’t – contrary to what I was “expected” to feel – experienced any indecision, guilt or trauma. Perhaps naively, I was amazed at the reader-response – over 400 on-line comments, and over 100 letters and emails.
By a rule of thumb, those who were anti-abortion cited no experience of pregnancy or abortion, whilst those who were pro-abortion, did. The response that I found most surprising, however, was a wonderful letter from a well-known and thoroughly redoubtable feminist columnist, who said that, although she had written about abortion many times, she had never mentioned her own terminations – she wasn’t “brave” enough.
It’s this silence from women – however strident they might usually be - that the anti-abortion lobby hopes to capitalise on. One of their recent publicity coups – causing unease in many instinctively pro-choice, including myself, initially – has been highlighting the rise in young women having multiple abortions. In short, women using abortion as a primary form of contraceptive.
But of course, young women having multiple abortions is, clearly, a matter for contraceptive and emotional education – not limiting access to abortion. And besides, I’d still rather have feckless young women having multiple abortions than feckless young women having multiple children.
And so, clearly, would the feckless young women. And that - thankfully for both them and us – is their right. But then, with Cardinal O’Brien simultaneously vetoing contraception, abortion
