Change or no change - let's talk about fears
I want to talk to you about your fears.
I know you’re torn. I know you agree that there are exceptional circumstances that make abortion acceptable – circumstances where you’re willing to concede, despite the fact that your gut tells you it’s wrong. I know that you feel that abortion should be a last resort, and you fear that the government’s proposed legislation fails to acknowledge that.
I won’t judge you. You’re not alone.
But what if I was to tell you that maybe you don’t need to feel so torn?
Hear me out – respectfully, non-judgementally. Because I actually do think there’s a middle ground here.
I think that you agree with abortion in cases of rape. Do you? Do you empathise with the girl who’s been violated so fundamentally, who is just about coping on her own, let alone with a child?
A yes vote is the only way to ensure that those pregnant as a result of rape can access abortion care, should they need and choose to seek it. No future parliamentary bills or negotiations will ever result in legislation that allows for termination in the cases of rape, if we vote to keep the 8th amentment – because any such legislation would be unconstitutional.
The need to report rape and relive the experience of it in order to qualify for a termination retraumatises women and girls who are already in an extremely distressing situation. Legal processes are time-consuming, and proving rape within the timeframe required to go ahead with a termination before the pregnancy progresses too far is pretty much impossible. Even if it was possible, such a process would be highly illadvised as it would lead to later abortions – something nobody wants.
The only way to care for rape victims who need abortion care is by providing access without the need to disclose the reason in the early weeks of pregnancy. This isn’t possible as long as the 8th amendment remains in place, and there’s no way around that.
I think perhaps you also agree with terminations in the cases of fatal foetal abnormalities. Do you? Do you feel the pain of the parents who learn that their very much wanted and longed-for baby won’t survive outside the womb?Unfortunately, as things stand, these parents face no other option than to walk around waiting for their baby to die, or plan a costly trip abroad for a termination. This is because a pregnancy of this kind – while sometimes a significant threat to the mother’s health sooner or later – doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the pregnant person’s life, and as such the constitution won’t allow a termination.
This won’t change further down the line with a different vote or another proposal. As long as the 8th amendment remains in the constitution, doctors’ hands remain tied. The only way to provide the medical care needed to those who face a fatal foetal abnormality and decide that they cannot continue with the pregnancy is by repealing the 8th amendment, and there’s no way around that.
I know that you feel that this is unfair, that you’re faced with a choice between two evils. I understand that you want to show compassion with those who are suffering, but you feel like the government has put you in the impossible position of having to vote for something you fundamentally disagree with if you want to do so. And I know that people who feel that way are inclined to err on the side of caution and vote to defend the status quo.
Why can’t they just offer you the middle ground?
Because that’s not how the constitution works, and this referendum is about the constitution.
The only thing you are voting on on the 25th of May is whether the 8th amendment should be removed or not. The government has put forward proposed legislation, which may be enacted should the yes vote win – but the words ‘may be’ are crucial.
Let’s say that the referendum goes through. Let’s say that the 8th is repealed. Immediately following its removal from the constitution, abortion will still be illegal in Ireland and punishable with 14 years in prison, because of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act. Nobody knows or can say what will happen after that.
If the current government stays in power, their proposed legislation could likely be enacted, ensuring that victims of rape are appropriately cared for. But if the yes side wins by a very small majority, it’s possible that the government might interpret the demand for change as minor and opt to legislate for termination only in very exceptional circumstances. If a general election takes place before legislation is enacted, change might take a very, very long time.
But what if the proposed legislation does become reality – how would you live with that? Maybe you’d focus on the fact that the Joint Oireachtas Committee also recommended that free contraception and improved sex education be provided, as there is an obvious link between the provision of these and lower rates of crisis pregnancies. In other words, rather than allowing them to take place abroad, you might have actually contributed to minimising the number of abortions needed. Surely that can only be a good thing?
You might also try to be pragmatic and focus the reality that those who need an abortion will seek one out, if unsafely or at huge personal expense – so while you can’t prevent abortions from happening, you can allow them to happen in a dignified and safe way for those who feel that they have absolutely no other option. The type of abortion you fear is already happening, and there is nothing you can do about that; the type of suffering you’d like to help minimise, however, you have a very real chance to do something about.
It is also worth mentioning, since the no campaign likes to highlight that the right advice or support can help a woman change her mind before she has the time to get on that plane, that the proposed legislation requires that 72 hours pass between an initial consultation with a GP and the termination being carried out. There will be time for reflection, and there will be time for someone in a desperate situation to ask for help and support, knowing that there are people around her who won’t blame and shame her. I’m not sure that the same can be said for someone who books expensive flights in secret, feeling judged by their own community and maybe even family.
We only know one thing for sure: nothing can change as long as the 8th amendment stays put. I ask you to consider whether you’re happy with the current situation; whether you think it’s right that rape victims have to travel for care; whether you are happy to send parents whose babies have been diagnosed with a fatal condition overseas, away from the support of their families, often having to leave their babies behind. This is what a no vote means. If you want any of this to change, you have to vote yes.
I ask you also to think of me, a mother of two, and to think of my sons and my husband. I beg you to consider whether you think it’s right that a potential pregnancy might risk them losing their mother and wife, due to a constitutional amendment that countless obstetricians and other medical professionals have said is unclear, unworkable and outright dangerous.
I ask you to think of the constitution for now, about change or no change, not the heartstring-pulling arguments of those who want you to fear abortion on demand. We can work on the demand in countless ways, and we can discuss and change statute legislation over and over. But a no is a no, and we know exactly what it looks like. We won’t get another chance to repeal the 8th and affect change for compassion with those who need it most for a very long time.
Why politics needs passion: on tone policing, Repeal jumpers and rational reasoning
Is tone policing the new master suppression technique?
What is a master suppression technique? you ask. It is a way to suppress and humiliate an opponent, according to Norwegian psychologist and philosopher Ingjald Nissen, who articulated the framework of such techniques in 1945.
And tone policing? A tone argument is one which isn’t strictly concerned with what is being said, but rather with the tone in which it is expressed. Tone policing, consequently, is a strategy of dismissing arguments irrespective of their legitimacy or accuracy. It’s a derailing tactic and, I would suggest, a master suppression technique on the rise.
Ireland boasts an impressive selection of recent examples of the latter, thanks to a series of articles published across various national dailies arguing that the problem with the public conversation on reproductive justice and a repeal of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution is not in its sheer existence or even the motivations behind its existence, but rather in what it sounds – and looks – like.
“Abortion is, understandably, an issue that arouses deep passions but that shouldn’t preclude an effort by all sides to listen to opposing views and try to understand the reasoning involved,” argued Irish Times columnist Paul Cullen yesterday. He was writing in the hope that today’s debate wouldn’t have to resort to “plumbing the depths” the same way it did in the 1980s – yet, he noted, “the signs aren’t good”.
Much of the recent criticism of the pro-choice movement has engaged in some or a great deal of tone policing. In the most literal sense, those who fear for the outcome of the debate have pointed out that shrill tones and anger won’t win over middle Ireland, that extremists with fists in the air are not exactly attractive. Similarly, Cullen dismisses the “strident voices on the two ends of the spectrum, each group deeply attached to absolutist views on the subject”.
Others have pointed to a naivety, suggesting that the pro-choice campaign doesn’t engage with the important moral debates, instead increasingly resembling a trend-conscious clique. “The push for liberalising abortion law sometimes feels more like a marketing campaign than a political debate,” Cullen chips in, pointing to the Repeal jumpers and focus on personal stories.
But that’s exactly where the tone police get it wrong: this very much is personal.
I was thinking a while back about why I felt so angry when a friend – a male friend, I should say – told me he identified as pro-life. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, and I’m sure there are plenty of his kind in my network of friends and acquaintances. But then it hit me: the privilege of putting the opinion out there, of making me aware of his stance against my right to bodily autonomy, and then suggesting that we agree to disagree in this supposed ‘debate’ about my life and health, is absurd to the point of being offensive. In saying it, he didn’t just side with the people who insist it is right to see me endure pregnancy against my will, give birth against my will, and parent a child against my will just to allow for a potential life to develop; he also equalled his right to staying true to a principle to my right to make decisions about what happens to me, my body and my life. An opinion against a feeling; an argument versus a lived experience.
We talk about reason and rational deliberation as cornerstones of a functioning democracy, about needing to prevent emotions from running high and stopping us from thinking sensibly. This notion of emotions as the antithesis of rational thought is nothing new, especially not for anyone familiar with rational choice theory, which sees citizens voting to maximise individual utility, completely free from emotional and societal bonds. But is this really a useful interpretation of society?
Studies of citizens and different social contexts have shown that, perhaps unsurprisingly, passion and talk of personal experiences are mostly seen to belong in the domestic, private sphere, while rationality should prevail in the political, public sphere. Activists are painted out to belong to an extreme fringe of society, while power and leadership is almost exclusively represented in media by serious figures of authority with no feelings and no displayed personal interest.
But the notion of rationality and passion as mutually exclusive has time and again been questioned by political engagement theorists. ‘Apathy’ means ‘without passion’, argues researcher Cheryl Hall, so the problem with apathetic citizens is a lack of political passion. Cognitive attention is not enough to spark political engagement – citizens need to care about something and have a vision in order to act. Put bluntly: politics needs passion.
At the end of his opinion piece, Cullen writes about Kathleen Sebelius, Barack Obama’s former health secretary, who identifies as anti-abortion but pro-choice. She believes that life begins at conception but accepts that it is not her business to impose her views on others. “Perhaps it is time we started hearing more of those voices,” the Irish Times columnist concludes. Ironically, those voices are very much heard throughout the pro-choice campaign: for instance, the work of Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, has been circulated and celebrated widely of late, and she too is almost coldly rational about how the notion of life from the moment of conception is compatible with passionately pro-choice views; and many others, myself included, have written extensively about the complexities of notions of life and pregnancy loss, yet without for a moment compromising on our pro-choice conviction. Perhaps it is time we started listening to more of these voices – even if they are angry. Perhaps it is time the mainstream media started amplifying them – even if they are shrill.
It is easy to write calmly, sensibly and rationally about just about anything, irrespective of how passionately you feel about it; you may notice how I haven’t been interrupted once in the almost 1,000 words in this post thus far. But the “productive national conversation” Cullen is calling for won’t take place on the opinion pages of our national newspapers – it will have to be a two-way thing, and it will cause friction.
I’m convinced that the huge majority of people agree that we need a productive national conversation on reproductive rights, but I think that the liberal rational choice ideal has sold us a lie about what such a conversation should look like.
Passions are informed by reason, and personal experiences inform our political beliefs. Show me a supposedly superior moral principle and I’ll show you the door; wear your heart on your sleeve and I’ll listen.
Free, safe, legal: on the importance of compassion, and why I won't be playing strategic games
I’m going to come out and say it: I’m for abortion on demand, if that’s what you insist on calling it. Without restrictions.
Time and time again we’re being told to tone it down. Again and again, newspapers insist on publishing opinion pieces telling us to be more strategic and less extreme. Not only are we too angry and shrill; our arguments are simply too much for middle Ireland to take.
But I feel sick every time I think about playing the strategy game, and I can’t help but think that it’s them and not us who are doing it wrong. It is clear as day that volume and persistence works. 30,000+ people don’t turn up to march for choice in the rain during an ongoing bus strike for nothing. Moreover, I’m convinced that it’s worth giving real conversation an honest chance, no matter how difficult that conversation is. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about compassion; and try as politicians might to suggest that Ireland has none, I beg to differ. 87% told Red C during a poll commissioned by Amnesty International Ireland that they want abortion access expanded in Ireland, and 68% agree that we should trust women when they say they need an abortion. And that’s not Dublin’s radicalised women; that’s near consistent across the counties and genders.
Maybe if I were trying to convince the most convicted of so-called pro-life advocates to change their ways I would get into the science about whether or not a foetus can experience pain and try to tease out whether life really does begin at conception. But in conversations with anyone else, I don’t think it really matters.
I’m not here to tell you when life begins. You’re allowed to think of an embryo as the child it may one day become – I’m not going to take that away from you. I’m here to ask you to think of women as people and to take that compassion you have, however deep down, for the woman who is told that her baby is not compatible with life, and extend it to pregnant people in all kinds of different challenging, untimely, complicated situations which you don’t know the details of.
I’m not here to tell you not to feel. You’re allowed to think about the potential of life and the amazing miracle of childbirth and wish for an ideal world where abortions aren’t needed – I’m not going to take that away from you. I’m here to ask you to deal with the complicated greyscale that arises the moment we accept that perfectly healthy zygotes are discarded every day in IVF clinics; that most parents, wherever they stand in the abortion debate, wouldn’t hesitate for a second if forced to choose between saving the life of their living, independently breathing toddler or that of a fertilised egg in a petri dish or even an already implanted, growing foetus.
When does life begin? I don’t know. What does it mean to be alive?
There are situations where we are compelled to empathise with a person who needs access to a termination of a pregnancy, and in those situations we learn that 'life' is not that black and white. But we don’t create laws based on our ability to empathise; we don’t write laws about women’s bodies based on how you feel. Because this isn’t about you.
This is about compassion, and I’m convinced that talking about life that way is worth it. I don’t want to play games, pitting women against each other; I don’t want to pretend that I agree with the pinciple of a foetus’s right to life, but only in the instances where I can’t empathise with its mother. And I refuse to play along with a debate that paints young women in need of abortions out as wanton, when the contempt for young single mothers is just as bad.
The rhetoric about abortion on demand and late-term abortions is a dishonest trick. No one has an abortion for fun. No floodgates are going to open, and no red light abortion districts will take over our high streets. We only have to look to Canada, where abortion is no longer regulated by law – available at any time, for any reason – and abortion rates are at the lower end amongst developed countries.
I want us to get real about the fact that pregnant Irish people have abortions, in Ireland and elsewhere at considerable financial and emotional expense, not to mention the completely unnecessary risks to their health. We have to decide how to deal with it: by toning it down and continuing a narrative of shame, or by admitting that this is what life is and working on being compassionate – even when it’s hard.
Termination or abortion - it's all about choice
There’s a lot of talk, yet again, in Ireland about TFMR – termination for medical reasons. People who have had the misfortune of having to go through this experience are writing blog posts and articles campaigning for new, proper legislation in Ireland to make the procedure legal, and opinion writers are producing powerful pieces in response to Ireland’s human rights record review in Geneva, begging for abortion to become a choice for all women, or if not that, at least in the case of TFMR.
There is no limit to my sympathy for those who have had to travel to another country in order to give birth to a baby that would never survive outside the womb, told by the powers that be that said horrifying experience would make them a criminal. I went through this while under the care of the NHS in the UK, and I think I would’ve burst out laughing if somebody had told me, at 21 weeks gestation, to keep walking around looking pregnant and answering well-intended questions about the due date, waiting for our baby to die. It is such a barbaric thing to ask of anyone that it seems absolutely ridiculous.
Yet: while I hated the word abortion, while I wanted everyone to know that we really didn’t have a choice, that we had planned the pregnancy and already loved this baby, this debate pains me. Campaigners are making the point so very clear: this is not an abortion; this is not about aborting an unwanted baby. They’re saying that if we can’t grant all women the right to choose, then we must at least grant it to these poor women – because this is different.
But is it different? Explain the difference to the woman forced to carry, give birth to and look after a baby she isn’t ready or able for.
This is only different if we don’t believe in choice, if we are happy to deny women the right to make decisions about their own bodies, if we accept that there is a limit to the amount of responsibility a woman is capable of carrying. If we legislate based on narrowly-defined criteria, suggesting that abortion is murder and criminal unless there is foolproof evidence that the baby is indeed already with certainty destined to die, we are still calling the shots, depriving women of bodily autonomy. In essence: we know better; they should do what they’re told.
It doesn’t matter how mind-numbingly nightmarish that experience was and how much I feel for every other couple that has the experience of an ultrasound scan turned into the most nerve-wracking, scary thing in the world; just because I can sympathise with them, that’s not to say that the decision of those whose experience I haven’t shared is any more straight-forward. We have to accept that if we value a woman’s right to make decisions about her body, that right has to last the whole way – and we have to trust her to be able to carry the responsibility for that decision, whatever that may be.
Some say that it’s a step-by-step process: if we legislate for TFMR now, people will get used to the idea, and some day, the rest will follow. I think, sadly, that those are the words of people who have given up on the possibility of Ireland ever legislating to support and empower women, instead settling for the second best. That’s a fight for sympathy and understanding – not choice. But a rhetoric that further demonises the informed, personal choice of having an abortion is not a step forward – it only plays into the hands of the pro-lifers, cementing the status quo.
Is choice still choice with strings attached?
According to the documentary The Right Child [Det rätta barnet], which was broadcast on Swedish television recently, a prenatal screening programme in Denmark has started a trend which, if it continues, will lead to no more babies being born with Down’s syndrome. With more advanced screening technology, more and more parents are choosing to terminate pregnancies when the condition is diagnosed.
In a leader editorial about the documentary, Hanne Kjöller raises her concerns for the kind of society prenatal diagnostic testing creates. Highlighting that she is a pro-choice advocate, she asks what will happen when screening programmes that can detect autism in foetuses are introduced. How narrow can the perception of the perfect child get?
Kjöller’s problem is in the qualifier. She insists that she is pro-choice, but the choice, it seems, is only really valid under certain circumstances – if you choose to have an abortion, your choice must be justified using principles acceptable to intellectuals like Kjöller. “I want the decision to be the parents’,” she maintains, continuing: “But I want everyone who stands before the decision – about testing or no testing, and about abortion or no abortion – to see that the choice in the long-run is also about the kind of society we want.” Now that’s what I call choice with strings attached.
I feel Kjöller’s pain. Of course it’s about what kind of society we want, and by making abortion services readily available we open up choice to people whose decisions we can’t control. It’s as scary as democracy, really. I used to be keen on the “I’m whole-heartedly pro-choice, but…” phrase too. Until I ended up in the situation where the sonographer turned away the screen and got that look on her face. It would be easy for me to say that in our situation, it wasn’t about choice; we didn’t have one. But that would be to dodge a difficult conversation.
See, I have a problem with Kjöller’s argument, and my problem, too, is in the qualifier. She is pro-choice, but only on the condition that she retains the right to judge those taking advantage of that choice. She is pro-choice, but she reserves the right to blame parents making that choice for creating a narrow-minded, judgemental world. Truth be told, she is not really pro-choice at all, because she is not prepared to be open-minded enough to take the consequences.
It should be said, of course, that Kjöller’s reservations reside primarily within the prenatal diagnostic testing realm and not within that of abortion services. Naturally, if parents don’t know whether their babies are healthy or not, the choices they make are completely blind to unjustifiable justifiers, and as such, their decisions can be considered pure and innocent. But modern technology doesn’t allow for an opaque veil of ignorance, so where do we draw the line? And, really, aren’t there plenty of other ethically questionable justifiers? How, for example, do we feel about termination for convenience? Whose moral compass gets to decide when we’ve crossed the line? Kjöller’s?
The abortion debate is difficult for a reason, and yes, it has to be nuanced. But surely the basic principle of choice (though I must reiterate that the parents facing it are unlikely to feel like they’ve got one) is based on the belief that only the parents themselves know whether or not they are ready and able to be parents? I highly doubt that giving them the right to make that call only once it has been proven that their baby is 100% healthy, or only if they can assure us that they are completely and utterly ignorant in regards to their baby’s health, simply because we have agreed that aborting a baby with a chromosomal abnormality would be evil, would somehow lead to a more open-minded society.
It has been said that the personal is political, and that is true. This is why we legislate around these issues. But Kjöller’s definition of choice, making it into an ethical stance like any political decision, is problematic in this situation; when the toughest of decisions becomes more personal than political and the rest of society stands there watching with its politically correct and ethically romanticised fists in the air, open-mindedness goes out the window.
It’s not easy, but you can’t have it both ways. After all, choice isn’t really choice if it’s conditional. The same way that Kjöller finds some abortion qualifiers problematic, I find that pro-choice qualifiers of any kind sit quite uncomfortably alongside the context within which the fight for universal abortion rights has been and is being fought. No, I don’t want to live in a society where the perception of what is normal gets narrower by the day either. But that doesn’t mean that I’m prepared to sign up for one where even pro-choice campaigners sneer at the choices made by women who simply couldn’t cope.
[All Swedish-to-English translations are my own.]