9 hours ago
My experience shows why women must be allowed late stage abortions
The change in law this week that decriminalises women who end an unwanted pregnancy at home, after the current legal limit of 24 weeks (previously the offence almost certainly led to imprisonment and could entail a life sentence), has led to outrage in many quarters. But I must confess, I welcome the changes, having pondered the arguments over the 22 years since my own abortion – always questioning whether I would have made different choices had my baby's condition been diagnosed far later in my pregnancy.
I have great friends who are passionate, eloquent advocates for unborn babies' rights and who are living testament to the immense joy that children who are disabled, or who have complex genetic conditions, can bring to a family. I have witnessed that robust parent-child love first-hand and wish it was foregrounded more in our public debates.
When our son Scobie was a toddler (he was born 18 months after the child who never was), he started talking of having a silver 'ghost brother' who chatted to him. That's how I've thought of my Patau baby ever since: a little human.
Even so, I do not regret my own decision and, if it had proved necessary, I would have made the same choice far later in my baby's gestation. If that avenue had been forbidden to me by law, I can all easily envisage coming to that conclusion in private, at my own peril, as I explored avenues marginally less painful than the one allotted to me by laws formed over a century ago.
Aged 35, when that first, fragile pregnancy careered off the rails, I was the editor and co-owner of The Erotic Review, busily engaged in fund-raising for the magazine and responsible for seven people's livelihood. I cannot imagine how I could have fulfilled my commitments to my colleagues while raising this child, let alone maintained my marriage. Angus was 51 at the time and anxious about his energy levels with a perfectly healthy, standard-issue baby, let alone one who would need round-the-clock care and outside help, had it lived. Nor would we have had any cushion of savings to help us.
More than that, I simply do not believe there is any kindness or dignity afforded to a baby with that grave level of disability in carrying it to term. I am even more opposed to the idea of legally enforcing a mother who does not wish to watch her newborn baby die (90 per cent of children with Patau Syndrome die within the first year of life and most die within 10 days) proceed to a normal labour. Another mother may make a different choice, but for me it would be the ultimate cruelty and might have crushed my sanity for all time.
We should never forget that the most vulnerable time for most women's mental health is during pregnancy, or just after birth. Post-partum psychosis and severe OCD are not uncommon, while suicides spike in this demographic. When I look at legal cases where women were prosecuted for late-stage abortions, they all speak of mental torment and very human desperation. The sort of self-harming behaviour (going through an induced miscarriage at home!) that should be addressed by psychiatrists and social workers, not judges.
I suppose I always see two paths: the one I took and think was right, yet still grieve on an elemental level. But there is also the other scenario, the one where I live in a country with harsher abortion laws and have to endure a labour that is always going to end in unimaginable distress. I would criminalise myself to avoid that pain, just as desperate pregnant women did before The Abortion Act of 1967. In my experience, we are punished enough by our consciences and ghost children, the attention of the courts is entirely unnecessary.
