Not this time - not by way of a fresh post.

Cath:

There’s an expectation on women that it should be difficult, guilt wrenching, and all of those things, and I think that attitude informs how women react to the question “Why did you have an abortion”.

There’s certainly some considerable truth in that, but as the American study I did find shows, it not impossible to obtain valuable data - so far as I’ve been able to find out there have been similar studies in Scandinavia and although I’ve not been able to get hold of one, the references I have managed to track down do suggest that their results are very similar to those found in the US study.

Lee:

I’m not sure that we’re quite on the same page here.

The ‘voice’ I’m referring to is the collective voice one finds when one examines research such as the US study - I’m certainly not suggesting that what’s needed are women to ship up on sofa on GMTV to discuss their personal experiences in public, although if any women does want to give that a go then they can feel free to do so.

If you contrast the rhetoric of the ‘pro-life’ lobby, their glib moralising, with what women in that study are actually saying about their reasons for choosing to have an abortion then it should be obvious to all but the most blinkered anti-abortionists that the reasoning process that women go through to reach their decision is anything but ‘feckless’ or irresponsible - and to address Cath’s point, I think the weight of evidence in that study makes the question of whether the women who did take part agonised over their decision or took what they saw as the only reasonable course of action and were entirely reconciled to the choice somewhat irrelevant. The reasons given stand on their own without the need to rely on any emotional content.

Why I think this matters is because what we do have clear evidence for in the this country is the fact that public support for legal access to abortion is rock solid at 65% + and has been for years, regardless of all the public moralising of ‘pro-lifers’ and the best efforts of the tabloids to whip up a bit of outrage every time a new set of abortion statistics is published.

Public opinion isn’t shifting in response to this current debate, nor has it done so in previous debate and my view is that that’s because the majority of people in this country, those who don’t care for arguments about rights, ethics and morals and look at this issue in pragmatic terms, are under no illusions at all about the realities of abortion, of why abortions take place and why women make the choices they make. Public support for legal access to abortion remains solid because its underpinned not by the idea that providing that access is right but because its necessary even if many might wish that it wasn’t and that women didn’t have make decisions about whether the can afford to have another child or choose between continuing their education or becoming a mother - and if the public accepts the necessity of legal abortion then not amount of discussion about rights and morals is going to shift that opinion beyond minor changes in time limits.

Now, if I’m right and what we have here is a genuine example of ‘crowd wisdom’ at work then that has profound implications for future because what it raises in the possibility not just of fighting a rearguard action against an ongoing stream of ‘pro-life’ efforts to gradually diminish rights of access to abortion but of ending the debate with a solid and lasting settlement.

This isn’t to say that I think that they *shouldn’t* just that there shouldn’t be an expectation on them to be a part of it if they don’t want to.

I’d say I’ll comment more when I’m sober, but frankly, I doubt I’ll be arsed. Doubtless by the time I switch on my computer tomorrow there will be another five-scroll essay from Unity saying something that could be said in two sentences and there will be others willing to a, read it and b. respond to it.

No it’s not, and to be honest I think that’s one of the first myths that needs to be tackled if we’re going to have an honest debate about this.

There’s an expectation on women that it should be difficult, guilt wrenching, and all of those things, and I think that attitude informs how women react to the question “Why did you have an abortion”. This is why I think it’s difficult, as Unity has found, to actually find research into why women have abortions.

I get the tl;dr reaction to every post Unity makes. They’re generally worth persevering with, though.

Unity, I’m drunk, and I may come across as crasser than I intend to, but seriously? A woman has an abortion, she’s going to give herself grief for the rest of her life. She doesn’t need you, other men, and the whole of fucking society doing it as well.

The deafening lack of contirbutions from women who have had abortions about their reasons and stuff is because IT’S NOT SOMETHING WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT. It’s painful and horrible and cruel for every woman who’s done it, and YOU ARE NOT HELPING making these fucking acres of posts from your high horse.

There are three practical reasons for researching the question of why women choose to have abortions…

1. The answers that such research would reveal would blow holes in the widely propagated myth that women who have abortions are feckless and irresponsible.

2. Those same answers would go a long way towards removing some of the social stigma that still surrounds abortion, not least by demonstrating that women who have abortions are not feckless and irresponsible, and

3. How the f**k can anyone come up with effective public policy measures in this area without understanding what the actually issues that influence women in their choices are.

Everything else is me getting passionate and a bit angry about this particular strand of the debate, because it - and the views and experiences of women who’ve faced these difficult choices - should be the very first consideration to be taken into account and listened to, and not a barely mentioned afterthought, which is pretty much how things have been running, but for the Abortion Rights campaign which seems to be about the only place to have got its priorities right.

Better?