My mum was mentally stable, succesful in her career and a great mum. Then she had an abortion! This was followed by a nervous breakdown, she was on transquilisers and later anti depressants for the rest of her life and died at the age of 59 of a form of cancer believed to be caused by damage to the cervix, which had happened during the abortion. She never recovered from the abortion. She couldn't even bear to listen to television news reports about proposed changes in the law. It ruined her whole life.

As a counsellor in training, the idea of compulsory counselling for anything is ridiculous and unworkable. Counselling is not a quick fix sticking plaster, it requires time, commitment and trust. What are the proposals exactly? Will the prospective mother be required to attend a course of counselling, or merely a single assessment session? If the former, it will be insanely expensive and time consuming for the struggling health service. If the latter, it is workable, but will achieve little. Neither options can work if the client is resistant. Even a short term course of counselling such as CBT (entirely inappropriate for this circumstance) takes several weeks. All counselling is done at the desire of the client, unless the person has been sectioned by the state. THIS is the argument, not the morality of abortion. If someone does not want to be there, it can never work no matter how long they attend sessions for.

No counsellor will advise the client to keep or abort a child, it would be absolutely unethical to do anything so directive. Counselling should be offered to every woman considering an abortion, it should be free, available and optional.

My personal thoughts on abortion, for what they are worth; I am pro-choice but not pro-abortion. I think it is a seriously sad thing for any woman to feel they need to do, and it definitely bothers me morally, however I think it is up to every woman to make that decision for herself.

Education rather than legislation is key to reducing abortion rates, however policy makers need to seriously look at reducing the time limit on abortions. Except in extreme circumstances (underage mother, health risk to mother or child, sexual assault etc) 12 weeks should be plenty to make this decision, and during this time 1 in 5 pregnancies abort themselves anyway. The 24 week limit is quite wrong at a time where technological advances mean that babies can be born at this time and survive.

The foetuses are murdered, hdg - it is ridiciculous to suggest such terms are 'neutral' ............ but if we want to go into semantics; On a DNAR form (get it right) this does not mean that we withdraw 'lifesaving care'! to withdraw such care is unlawful ie we may still give anti-biotics etc but clinicians won't make a (positive) attempt to resusitate - get it right you numpty.

Apart from rape victims, there is no need for an unwanted preganancy. What are the chances of a couple in a stable relationship where BOTH the woman and the man are using contraception getting pregnant? bugger all. People must take responsibility.

terms such as 'foetus' and 'termination' sound better than 'baby' and 'murder' don't they?

Whats the difference between a baby delivered at 23 weeks, and a feotus 'terminated' at 23 weeks?

nothing at all, just semantics shouted at us by the pro-murder lobby

@ Martin L

If you are infering that abstinence is 100% per cent as a contraceptive, well I've heard of a case - albeit a disputed one - where it was not effective.

Nor is even both parties using contraception fail-safe, and, consequently, does not make unwanted pregnancy and abortion a non-issue to said parties.

As for abortion and it's ethical implications: is it really ethical, in 2011, that a third party - whether an ancient text, a government or an individual - can force you to have a pregnancy, and give birth to a baby, which you do not want?

@ Indie Kid

My sympathies to you for your loss; I feel your mother, on the evidence you have given), should have had greater counselling and medical support post-abortion, and the operation, itself, seems inexpertly carried out.

But many women have abortions and do not suffer such adverse psychological (or physiological) effects, and are not cold, hard-hearted people because of it.

While I agree with the burden of the argument, to make a leap from this measure, however problematical it may be, to the murderous activities of 'pro'-lifers in S. Dakota is a logical error. They are associated but not causally linked; the culture of religion and politics in that part of the USA is the cause of such atrocities.

While enjoying but not necessarily agreeing to every column Laurie Penny writes sloppy journalism is not a charge I would have levelled at her before this article. But, this really reads like a yelled through a megaphone rant with a polemic belonging to a rather weak A-level essay.

Laurie, abortion is an act of violence which kills an unborn child.

I think we all really know this, but when did facts ever come in the way of convenience? I cannot find it in myself to demonise or stigmatise, nor condemn women who have had abortions, but I don't know of a single woman who views abortion happily - some justify their choice saying that it was right for them at that time, but many others mournfully say that they felt they had no choice.

Dorries and Field's proposal if enacted wouldn't prevent a single abortion. If abortion is a legitimate choice - and I don't think it is - why argue so viciously against a more informed choice?

"the NHS is not a moral arbiter. Addicts, alcoholics and those who acquire injuries in gang fights and bar brawls are not required to justify their need for treatment before receiving it. The only patients who are obliged to make a moral case for referral to a doctor are women seeking abortions."

This is incorrect. The NHS is sometimes forced to moralize due to their lack of funding. One example is if a doctor had two patients, one, a 40 yr old father with liver disease (through no fault of his own) and a 30 yr old alcoholic with liver disease. Both need a transplant- and there's only one liver. Who do you give it to? Being a medical student we are constantly debating what we're supposed to do in these situations and it usually would be given to the 40 year old father. Why? Because he hasn't contributed to the liver problems through bad habits. Ideally there would be two livers, but this is rarely the case.

This is everyday stuff for the NHS and sadly due to lack of money, priority must be considered. I think something has to be said for this counselling idea because we all know that some women do suffer after an abortion and the only way to make a decision is to be properly informed of the possible consequences. And Laurie I'm not religious but I am anti-abortion. I can see that it's not black and white but in essence it clearly is the destruction of human life or certainly a potential human life. And it's no better than shooting an innocent person dead. In fact some abortion procedures are much more prolonged than that.

We can argue about how moral abortion is or isn't until the cows come home. The fact remains that whatever anyone *thinks* about it, people (and by people I mean women *and* men. Men are often equally involved in the decision) will choose to do it. Making it more difficult will only make everything worse and put women's lives in danger. I'm not saying counselling will endanger women's lives here, but it's a step in the wrong direction. Forcing anyone into counselling degrades them and their decisions. Offering counselling is fine. Not everyone believes counselling to be necessary, or helpful. Nanny state, back off.

Scott Ross, the Bible never mentions abortion, a fact which the moral blackmailers of the Christian Right pass over in silence. They also omit or distort the relevant scientific fact, which is that there is no reason to consider the foetus live until around the 24 week mark. If you do consider the Bible the word of God, I wonder how you justify adding to God's word on the subject of abortion. As I recall, the Judaeo-Christian deity does not look with favour on those who distort his word. Perhaps you should review your sacred text before offering spurious advice to others?

About HIV testing: only some clinics have a policy for offering counselling before having an HIV test. This used to be regarded as best practice about 10 years ago. Nowadays with the thrust from national and international HIV programmes promoting the image of HIV as a 'manageable chronic disease' - which it indeed is in developed countries - it is common in GUM clinics and other settings not to be automatically given counselling before an HIV test.

Also the pre-test counselling for HIV was not meant to "offer other options" and "change the patient's mind" - it was to discuss the ways that a positive result might impact finances and livelihood, at a time when life insurance premiums were sky high for HIV positive individuals and discrimination at work was more likely to happen for HIV positive individuals than it is now.

There really is no comparison between this pre-test counselling - which is not as widely offered now as it was before anyway - and the proposed mandatory counselling "to offer other options" by Dorries and Field.

My mum had an abortion many years before she had me and my siblings and she maintains it was the best decision she made, not being stuck with unwanted offspring meant she could finish her college courses, succeed in her job, afford a nice home and then later make an environment were offspring would be happy.

Abortion is my right. Abortion was my mum's right. I will fight tooth and nail to make sure it is my daughter's right.

Alas for my nana, it was not her right, she had to marry a man who didn't want to be married to her, they lived unhappily before he died at middle age, my grandpa never wanted or liked my mum. My mum knew from first hand experience what it felt like to be an unwanted child.

It is MY body, it is MY choice. If I don't want to be pregnant, I won't be made to be by someone else who thinks they know what is best for me better than I do. It is MY body, MY life, MY choice, anyone who tries to take that away from me is my enemy.

Catherine

In reply to your comments on my post :

1. I don't really see how anything you have written refutes my own points. Are you saying that the very act of getting pregnant accidentally means that an abortion should be carried out without further consultation?

2. I agree that statistically contraception will fail very occasionally. However, a 3% and 5% fail rate is far too high and defies credibility. I can offer anecdotal evidence of a number of cases that I personally know of where pregnancy took place because the couple got "carried away".

Absurdly they presented this as evidence of how "hot" and highly sexed they were - no time for boring stuff like condoms you see. I recall that the unfortunate womnan did not feel so "hot" after going through the trauma of a late termination. Her erstwhile partner meanwhile showed a clean pair of heels when confronted with her in a very upset state.

3. It's not a case of educating women - just providing a neutral space with well informed and non partisan advisors, who will lay out all the options, leave the individual to make her own choice and then facilitate for her.

4. I don't see how anything I have written advocates "forcing" women to have kids. I suspect that you are aware that women making an informed choice are less likely to choose abortion. It's a gruesome and repulsive thing whatever way you look at it. Otherwise where is the problem?

My main point is that abortion is a last ditch option that should be avoided as much as possible and that it is perfectly possible to do so with a bit of common sense, planning and general adult behaviour.

If you provide people with information - not propaganda - they can make their own choices. It's better that way, as in the long run they will have to live with their decisions for better or worse.

God is a really boring aside to the abortion conversation. I'm sure it's just an obligatory part of the conversational pattern - like an elephant wouldn't be an elephant without its trunk or a left-winger wouldn't be a left-winger without 'pro-choice'. We need some new patterns in conversation. The old ones are starting to look painfully unreal.

It just occurred to me that a really great commenter name might be Former_Beatle. Someone should take that up asap.

Marissa

"Yes abortion is murder and it is the pregnant woman's right to murder her unborn child. There - I said it".

And well said too, if I may say so.

Maximum respect to you for having the courage of your convictions and cutting through the bullshit and obfuscation that characterises so much of the pro-choice standpoint.

I would be very interested to read your views on why there are so few commentators ready to take the bull by the horns in this way, relying instead on a lot of waffle about "growths", "parasites" and the rest to avoid calling a spade a spade.

My own take is that, given that legislation on this issue is framed by parliament, which is in turn influenced by public opinion - in which everyone can participate, regardless of how much pro-choicers bellow "just shut up, OK?" - such openness and honesty would work to the detriment of the pro-choice position.

In a debate that halls the whole issue into the light of day, with no comforting euphemisms, the level of shock and disgust from the public would be so high that abortion would most likely be banned overnight, or at least very severely restricted.

Please do not misunderstand. I truly respect your frankness, but I suspect that if you put this to other pro-choicers they will see your position as "unhelpful" at best.

You are aligned with a campaign that effectively relies on lying and covering up truth in order to supposedly provide women with choice. The irony of their position appears to be completely lost on them.

I cannot agree that men should simply but-out as you demand. I believe that the future of the next generation of human beings is as much our business as it is that of women, although I appreciate that many men act very irresponsibly.

At present men seem to be offered a "heads we win, tails you lose" scenario. They must but-out of the abortion debate, but provide maintenance if the woman keeps the child; They must be available as parents, but clear off if not wanted. These are conditions demanded by people with the "I want" outlook of spoilt children. Either men are full partners in the production or disposal of offspring, or they should be relieved of any responsibility whatever. You can't have your cake and eat it.

There is one other aspect of abortion that pro-choicers seem tio be in a total muddle about; that of the level of abortion of female foetuses in the developing world.

This is often spoken of as a great tragedy and a crime against women.

It is true that cultural factors make abortion of females far more likely, but if one is pro-choice, so what? Can women only have a choice if the wetern pro-choice lobby approves of their motives? So what if the foetuses are female? After all they are only "Blobs", "growths", blah, blah, blah.

This is the core of my objections to the pro-choice argument. They are characterised by contraditions and muddled thinking together with a high level of basic dishonesty.

The whole thrust of this article appears to be that the move to provide women with counselling before abortion is motivated by a desire to dissuade them. There is no indication that this is the case. It is not being proposed that the counsellling is provided by Life or SPUC after all.

The pro choice camp knows that counselling or detailed advice, however neutral is not to the benefit of thgeir cause. Women need to be kept in the dark and fed comforting misinformation, otherwise they may make the wrrong choice.

They should rename themselves the "just shut up and do what we say, however contradictory and dishonest it is" movement.

Great article, agree with everything you've said -- especially that we need to improve sex education and contraception provision if we really want to get the abortion rate down.

I'm a bit confused about one thing though. Does the "one in three adult women who do make that decision" you refer to mean that one in three adult women who become pregnant have an abortion, one in three who have an accidental pregnancy, one in three who consider having an abortion or one in three women in general?

Laurie. I agree with everything here. I comment because your terminology here, 'addicts. alcoholics' is judgmental, old-fashioned and unhelpful as well as extremely important to 'get right'. I wanted to make sure you were aware of this, given that I feel you are likely to be sympathetic!

This is helpful, see the section on 'Reporting on drug use':

http://www.drugscope.org.uk/resources/Media+Guide

Keep up the good work!

Though broadly I agree, some of your language is somewhat unsettling - like the implication that abortion is a 'treatment' and that there is a 'patient'. Whatever one's views on choice, there is a distinction between a valid wound - be it self-inflicted or otherwise - and the termination of a (potential?) life.

Moreover, the shame response too appears to me to be a moral and human response to actually having an abortion. Being made to feel ashamed is one thing and I agree unhelpful; however shame itself just seems decent and marks the moral complexity of the individual involved. I think a good deal of the constenation regarding abortion is born of the implicit abandonment of this shame within individuals and social policy more generally.

For the consumer individual where sex is leisure, for sure, abortion is going to be necessary. Part of this process is degrading to the value of life itself and how we feel about terminating life. It isn't just that sex ed is no longer fit for purpose and that contraception is unreliable - the whole pleasure-self based orientation of consumer individuality promotes a general emphsis on self over other and abortion has its part to play in this process.

I find it frustrating that those who claim to unabashedly champion life sometimes seem more concerned with presenting a moral front than with genuinely confronting the realities of where and why abortion takes place.

Restricting legal access to abortion has very little impact upon abortion rates. The only significant difference is that in countries where access is restricted, the rates of infection, serious injury and death, not to mention psychological trauma, are much greater, as there is no guarantee of medical standards of care. This means more women suffering and dying - and, if you believe in the sanctity of life, the potential for two deaths rather than one. For example, in Ethiopia, where abortion is illegal, despite strong religious cultural influences the second highest cause of hospital admittance for women is complications resulting from illegal abortion. Even in places where abortion is legal but restricted, as in some of the more conservative states of America, the levels of abortion are not dramatically different and indeed, the levels of unplanned pregnancy and STIs are significantly higher than in more permissive states.

Legislation seems to be a remarkably blunt tool for trying to effect moral change in this case, and does not seem to have any particularly significant effect on abortion rates which, presumably, is the main aim of those who wish to enact legislation restricting abortion. Indeed, restrictive legislation would seem to have the effect of potentially increasing the numbers dying, surely anathema to stated aims. I'm curious as to how those who identify themselves as pro-life see this situation? I'm also genuinely curious as to how you square a belief that life is sacred from conception with the fact that as many as 1 in 4 conceptions end in miscarriage?

I believe that presenting women with more choices, such as counselling, if they want them, is a good thing. But Dorries' proposal seems ill-thought out on multiple levels, already well-chronicled by some of the other commenters here.

This is also problematic because nobody is making clear where all the extra counsellors required would come from. Many people in desperate need of counselling currently wait for months; they'd have to wait even longer if counsellors were being siphoned off to provide 'advice' to perfectly functional, rational people who just happened to have ethically contentious decisions to make.

EhtchTee

"Unlike some posters above, I like the stuff Laurie writes. Closer to the bone the better I say, and the way she winds up certain comfortable people is a great attraction to me".

Hmmm. Actually on this platform I would say that Lauries' article represents the mainstream view.

Given the extreme and vitriolic reactions to comments that stray from the pro-choice line, I would also say its the pro-choice constituancy that is being dragged out of its comfort zone. They seem to be totally freaked by the mere possibility that someone might disagree with them.

The constant insistence that a foetus is not actually a human being in the very early stages of development, but is - as one poster asserts - equivalent to a bodily organ such as a kidney or some sort of invasive parasite, is very strange, as well as inaccurate.

Personally I see nothing wrong with terminating a pregnancy in the very early stages, when the foetus is at such a simple level of development that it is not in at real sense alive, but find it totally repugnant when what is being destroyed is quite obviously a very small, very young person.

I think that the pro-choice lobby are well aware of this, which is why they expend so much energy on the intellectual equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "la, la, la. I'm not listening".

If abortion is an appropriatre choice it should stand on its own merits. It shouldn't depend on howling down the opposition and blocking access to information for those contemplating a termination in favour of sloganeering and posturing about "rights". How can you be given your rights when you are being prevented from making an informed choice in case it upsets you?

Pretending the foetus is not a human being relies upon keeping people in the dark and wilfully ignoring pretty obvious biological facts.

Essentially the pro-choice lobby are conceding the point ; that abortion is killing another human being simply because its existence is inconvenient and it is too small and vulnerable to be able to do anything about it, but trying to stop anyone saying so.

Its an act of supreme selfishness presented as a lifestyle choice.

Lox, it is the argument that the tissue comprising the foetus has special status that is banal. If the growth capacity of the zygote is what's giving you pause here, then what about tumours? They too grow and develop, they too draw on their host's resources, they too invade and rearrange tissues, they too are alive. They "have the potential to be something else". What of it?

All this fetishism around cellular biology is ignorant and tiresome in the extreme. Abortion is not just legal because it's legal (in fact in most of the world it is not legal, and even in the so-called enlightened west it is hedged about with all kinds of restrictions born out of the conflict inherent in Enlightenment capitalism between libertarianism and misogyny), it is a right based on the most fundamental notions of human dignity and bodily integrity.

No amount of squealing about the pink little piggies that *might have* gone to market is going to change that. Potential is not existence, and potential rights do not trump actual rights.

Abortion is as old as prostitution and just as disgusting, but sex happens, and for many, pregnancy is just collateral damage which can be dealt with. The western world still believes in the myth that females are "sugar and spice and all things nice etc.". Forget it!; females are just as greedy, devious, and evil as men; they just display their essence in different ways. Abortion is one of them.

The current right-wing adminstration in the UK are seeking to stigmatise these people just as much. These people cannot be talked to, and as with all moralists, they feel they have an automatic right to entertain ideas about things which are not any of their business & judge individuals to be 'worthy' or 'unworthy' depending on how much the said individual conforms to their prejudices. http://www.homeimprovementhq.net/

Plenty of detractors arguing from the same old biblical, patriarchical standpoint. We're still very much in the bronze age, at times.

I had a termination in my twenties . Ten years on I still feel it was the best thing for me at the time. I was neither bewildered or I hope mad. I say this not for sympathy or Judgement (I am sure I will get the later). But because I think it is important for Woman like my self if possible to say "I have done this" , to help reduce the secrecy.

As a aside you do not have to under go counselling to receive HIV testing at any of the clinics I know of and in some G.P.'S surgery's it is also standard for new patients.