Nadine Dorries MP begins a campaign to restrict abortion for women in the Chamber of the UK Houses of Parliament on Tuesday 31st October.
If the right to an abortion is decreased or removed from women in the UK, (as it is elsewhere across the globe), how will that be a step forward?
What misogynist hatred is this? You would condemn a woman to 9 months carrying an unwanted child, to which she must give birth? She will then be forced to raise the child, be expected to care for it, provide for it and educate it, until he/she can fend for him/herself? All the while the mother will be aware that she did not want this child, and that a 'civilized society' forced her to spend her life this way. We do not give life prison sentences to some rapists, but instead would force the 'victim' of rape to endure a life caring for any resulting child?
And the children? Babies born to unwilling mothers are put at greater risk of physical and mental distress. When a child keeps you awake screaming for nights on end with toothache, and you did not want that child, what likely outcome is there? Is this what 'society' wants?
The reason behind this thinking is that life is somehow sanctified. A foetus has miraculously been created (by some Higher Power) and who are we to deny it life? What just God would allow this poisonous logic? When we deliberately breed cattle for the table, do God-fearing Christians take up arms against our intention to create life? If a woman takes medication for a life-threatening condition and suffers an early-term miscarriage, is she to become a murderer? Women do not schedule abortions thoughtlessly. They are a necessary medical procedure made to protect womens' health, mental well-being and genetic vulnerability.
Life is what we make it. Every day, many spontaneous and planned actions result in the conception of a child or children. Many of these will naturally miscarry undetected. Others may be lost during pregnancy. Others may grow full-term and be born. There is no mysticism in this. We have an over-populated planet, and many common dangers affect the balance of human beings on this planet. But I, for one, have no desire to make mothers out of unwilling women for the sake of religious or theological argument.
Please contact your MP and give him/her short shrift if you agree.
I'll get off my soapbox now and return to inane blogging shortly.
Penny Clark Lapenna, mother of 3 daughters and 2 miscarried foetuses, who fervently believes in a woman's right to a safe abortion.
