A tearful MP and the true trauma of abortion
TWO extraordinary things happened this week. On Monday we were told the first womb transplants in this country will take place later this year.
That gave hope to women who could not have children without the pioneering surgery.
Then, on Tuesday we saw a female MP weep in the House of Commons as she pleaded for the right to abortion for women in Northern Ireland, where it is not legally available.
It was a disturbing juxtaposition. First a medical development that offers the chance to create new life; next a tearful cri de coeur from someone in favour of ending it.
Yet to me both events actually conveyed the same vital message — one often overlooked in the polarised abortion debate — that a woman’s yearning to be a mother is one of humanity’s most powerful instincts.
Take womb transplants first. The fact that there is a waiting list of 50 women who want a life-threatening five-hour operation for a new womb is eloquent testimony to that instinct.
But so too, ironically, was the powerful speech of the tearful politician in the Commons even as she argued for the right for women to have abortions in Northern Ireland.
Unable to contain her grief, Tory MP Heidi Allen, 43, broke down as she said: ‘I was ill when I made the incredibly hard decision to have a termination.’ Labour’s Jess Phillips also said that she endured an abortion and read out harrowing letters of other women who had done so, adding that they should not be made criminals.
What struck me was that Heidi Allen, a successful career woman and hardened politician, was deeply upset over her abortion many years later.
For decades the sisterhood’s message has been that an abortion is hardly traumatic — almost no more troubling than a trip to the sea-side.
When Dublin voted to legalise abortion last month, the decision was greeted by feminists with a triumphant glee I found disturbing.
Some 200,000 abortions took place in this country last year, yet no honest recognition has been given to the real trauma many women suffer.
I am not a pro-lifer. I do, though believe real thought should be given to lowering the 24-week legal limit for abortion — a stage at which many premature babies now survive.
And while many may have felt queasy in our emotionally incontinent age to see an MP weep in the Commons, her honesty about the emotional pain and lingering sadness of abortion told its own story.