Comment on abortion

"... personally, i dont believe that abortion is a need for any woman."

I finally have time, between looking after my toddler and my relationship, resuming my studies, being 24 weeks pregnant and keeping my paid employment, to give this comment the attention it deserves.

Wow! Not a need! Hearken to the thoughtless, dulcet tones of the fortunate girl who's never needed one!! I can tell you that no need on earth is so desperately felt, so panic inducing or so fiercely resented as the need for an abortion. Resented, because however involved your boyfriend is, it's fundamentally a function of loneliness, an occasion where you alone, the female, must make up your mind and face the music. Like contraception, abortion is one of those things which honestly would never exist if it weren't an urgent, powerful need.

I agree that in an ideal world it would not be a need - a world where human females were only fertile for a foreseeable couple of months a year and only ever after attaining financial independence. But since we're constantly fertile for nearly forty years .. to callously suggest that abortion is not a need is willful blindness.

What, after all, is the woman suggesting? That she is the only moral being in the universe? That the thousands of women who leave their front doors to look for an abortion every day, do so with a casual shrug and a smile and with their mind on their evenings' entertainment? A little reflection would discover that nobody would ever have one if they didn't need it! Does the phrase,"Hmm, I fancy an abortion today. I don't need it, but I'd like one!" exist in the language? No, the phrase is, "I need an abortion."

Nor is it only a need for the woman. The clearest way to understand this is to consider an illustration. I have met women having abortions who already have children. Their knowledge of exactly what they are doing is grimly real. Leaving aside for the moment the mother's needs (please note that one's mind is only able to do this because the mother, at this stage, is always female. Were the pregnant person male, the thought of suggesting their life was less significant than the foetuses' would be offensive) - leaving aside the mother's needs, in a case where the woman already has children she is obviously catering, with her agony, for the needs of the baby who's already around, the unborn for whom there is no place, and her family as a whole.

I reiterate, organised religion should devise a suitable ceremony to reflect one's grief, to provide an arena for both the grief and the courage, the absolute, unwavering assumption of sole responsibility, to be expressed and recognised.