CHERISH LIFE: BRISBANE, 7 FEBRUARY 2009
“Real Choice Entails a Range of Choices:
pregnant women need personal support to enable her to care for herself and her child. ”
“Choice?”
The word “Choice” can be meaningless. It is meaningless semantics for the majority of women who feel trapped or cornered into an abortion. A pregnant woman who is facing one option, abortion, is not given the freedom to choose. If parliaments are truthfully working to give choice then there needs to be sufficient funding for pregnancy counselling and pregnancy support as well as pregnancy loss counselling, particularly post-abortion counselling.
Abortion is about both a woman and her unborn. Abortion can never about one or the other.
Whilst abortion advocates present their case around an either or scenario the fact is that: mother and child are intimately intertwined regardless of whether there is recognition of a relationship. Any woman who has been pregnant and who has had a miscarriage, a stillbirth, had their child adopted or women who have had an abortion know that whilst the pregnancy ends but their motherhood remains. For a woman who has been pregnant, her motherhood cannot be medically or surgically removed from all that is an integral part of her womanhood. Forever she is a woman who has been pregnant. She is a woman who has carried for a period of time her own unborn human child. She is and was that child’s mother – biologically, psychologically and at various times in her life intellectually recognises this fact.
In the film Sophie’s Choice a woman is given the choice of saving one of her children: one allowed to live and the other to be sent to a concentration camp and certain death. Feeling compelled to choose the fate of her child was to haunt her for the rest of her life. Ask any woman who has had an abortion to comment on the lifelong effect of choosing one life over another. In an abortion it is often perceived by the pregnant woman as either my future or the unborn’s.
Each and everyone of us needs support, especially when feeling vulnerable, overwhelmed, and uncertain of what the future holds. A part of our humanity is the need to be loved and supported in making decisions which distinguishes us from other life forms. The BIG QUESTION is – so why are all the politicians and voters not clambering for pregnancy support services, boyfriends to take responsibility for supporting their partners. Why is it that most human rights advocates are not highlighting that a person with a disability is a human being whether within or outside the womb?
In third world countries does the international community say to the poor, the homeless, the dispossessed that our response to your poverty or dispossession we will abort your children. In first world countries, in Victoria and perhaps in Queensland, too often our response to homelessness pregnant women or mothers carrying a child with a disability is state-funded ending of their unborn’s life. The homelessness is still not addressed so the abortion has resolved her homelessness.
Politicians need to understand one choice is no choice and we need to stand in radical solidarity with the woman.
A woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy needs support from family, friends and the community in order to make choices which affect her life and the life of the unborn child. Free choice requires full and truthful information. Decision making counselling where the woman’s feelings and options are fully explored before an abortion along with practical, tangible supports needs to be provided. Adequate time to consider and work through other options where the woman would be freed from feeling she had to choose between herself or her unborn child is not provided in the absence of decision-making counselling. Women who are considering or booking an abortion deserve to know the truth and be able to have all available knowledge to assist them to make rational informed choice. To deny them the truth is to deny them their freedom. When I asked an abortion provider whether a woman was given counselling of this nature I was told that most would leave rather than go through with the abortion.
Truth and informed consent
If a person is to act freely, their freedom to choose is only as real as the truthfulness and completeness of the information provided, the compassionate, tangible love and support provided to her, and the absence of coercion from others in what for the woman may be seen as self-preservation.
Given private abortion providers have no interest, indeed they would have a conflict of interest, in providing decision making counselling, informed consent and practical tangible support, then the community has a responsibility to assist the pregnant woman to realise that her situation need not mean that either her life or that of the unborn child she is carrying is over. As one of Australia’s pre-eminent obstetricians told parliamentarians, “In today’s medicine it is a nonsense tom claim that there needs to be a choice between the mother’s life and hope’s for the future and that of her unborn child.” Practical care and love for a mother assists her to care for her child.
Making abortion legal does not erase the fact that the life of an unborn child has ended and that child will never have an ongoing interpersonal relationship with his or her parents. In subsequent years, the mother and the father are left pondering all the “what ifs” around first day of school, last day of secondary school, 18th and 21st birthdays and all the “what would my child be doing now?” questions.
One MP who voted for the Victorian legislation and who spoke to me afterwards explained the he voted to legalise abortion in order to stand up for his wife who had an abortion. She troubled by the fact that her abortion had been illegal in Victoria. She had expected that the legal status of abortion would put her mind at ease. With the wisdom of hindsight, both realised that legalising abortion does not legitimise abortion in the human heart and that they had done no favour for subsequent generations of women who would still not be told the truth and be in a position to make a fully informed choice.
A number of the clinics in turn told us of their work and then showed us around their site. In one clinic, after being told about the process undertaken immediately prior to the abortion, we were invited to see the first of the abortion rooms allocated to first trimester pregnancies. We saw the chair the woman sat, not unlike a dentist chair, and there was a monitor screen alongside it. Not having any medical training I asked was the screen to monitor the woman’s blood pressure and vital signs. “No,” the doctor informed my colleague and I. “It is the ultrasound screen which shows the heartbeat. It ensures that the doctor monitors the heartbeat and when it stops we are sure that the abortion is successful.” In answer to my question, “How does the woman/mother cope knowing that and what is her reaction when she sees it?” I was told, “Oh, we make sure she never sees it, because if she did she would be out of here.” That clinic never told the woman the embryological stage of the life developing within her nor what would occur to it during the abortion; only that the abortion was a suction curette which would remove the content of the womb. To the question, what practical information or supports did they ever offer a woman to continue with her pregnancy, the answer was that because women rang to book an abortion, it was provided. Options/decision making counselling (as distinct from procedure and post procedure advice) was not provided.
Post abortion support
There should be no judgement of any woman who has had to make the decision to have an abortion. Women who have had an abortion need our life-long love and support. Many of these women suffer from post-abortion stress syndrome.
MPs’ “Conscience” Votes?
MP’s were given a conscience vote on all bioethical legislation in Victoria but is a conscience vote a vote which the public would understand as one caste in freedom based upon the dictates of onne’s conscience? Most accept that if MP’s have a conscience vote then informed decisions are made based upon all the evidence. However, the reality may be a different matter for a Minister whose responsibilities are complementary to the subject matter of the Bill when that Minister is told that the “responsibility” of a Minister is to support government legislation. Is it a conscience vote if a Ministerial advisor is assigned to apply pressure to an MP to be absent from the vote so that the legislation will pass? Is it a conscience vote if career advancement to a Ministerial position or parliamentary secretary or preselection in the next election is dependent upon supporting government legislation?
Medical Conscience
If a political party effectively denies freedom of conscience to its own MP’s via a range of mechanisms and pressures, then there is absolutely no sympathy or willingness to accede to the rights of doctors, nurses and pharmacists to exercise conscientious objection in relation to the performance of or participation in an abortion.
Clauses in the Victorian Abortion Act 2008 compel medical personnel to perform or refer or assist in abortions. You would be wondering why are doctors being forced to refer for an abortion when a search on the internet will easily give the location of abortion providers? Why is informed consent an important part of the infertility and surrogacy legislation and yet denied in the abortion legislation? The Victorian law requires informed consent in order to have a child but not for an abortion which ends the life of a child.
Speaking the truth and enlightening MPs and advisors now!
Now is the time to act. Contact your Members of Parliament and explain the reasons why legalising abortion is not good for women in a reasoned and respectful manner. Those who will have the most impact on MP’s are women who have had an abortion and now realise they were not given real choices and women who have been pressured to have an abortion, and those who are alive today because their parent/s decided to keep their child rather than have an abortion. As women who have had abortion/s gain the strength to speak about its effect on their personhood - their womanhood, should they wish to visit their politicians we may assist them to tell their stories and voice their concerns and regarding the lack of real choice . It is vital tat MPs listen and learn and factor this into their vote. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists need to explain to MP’s why they would not want to perform an abortion or be a part of an abortion procedure, need to explain why it is so important to give women informed choices that support the woman and the unborn child and why it is so important to protect the rights of every citizen to a conscientious objection.
Pro-choice does not equal pro-abortion. Legislation that is woman centred is focussed on the woman in her motherhood and thus mother and baby are supported.