Here, in India Knight, we have a woman who thinks abortion "needs to be legal and freely available", but she clearly sees a callousness in the way women are treated by those supposedly supporting their rights, lives, health, and dignity:
[I]f said men found themselves in need of an emergency abortion, I don’t expect their doctors would chuck some kind of horror-pill at them and tell them to go home and sit on the loo until the foetus was expelled. And yet government advisers are, as we speak, paving the way to make DIY abortions “easier” for women. I like “easier”. It’s a bit like the NHS providing penknives and Savlon to anyone who fancies a caesarean, or who can’t quite face the queue for a mastectomy.
She looks at how things are now in the UK, and the direction abortion supporters want to move:
Currently, if you take an abortion pill – two pills, actually: mifepristone, which detaches the foetus from the womb, followed by misoprostol, which induces miscarriage – you are given both in hospital. If the law is changed, the second pill will be made available as a takeaway, so that you can stagger away cramping and finish the job in your own bathroom.
In other words, they're gonna imitate the Americans.
Ms. Knight ponders what this means:
Now, think what you like about abortion – I’m not keen, as it happens, though I do see that it needs to be legal and freely available – but surely chucking pills at women and expecting them to go home, cramp and bleed until the thing is done and then – what? Flush the loo? – is a brutality too far. It is, obviously, an act of brutality towards the foetus (which I would call the baby, hence my issue with this whole subject) but, my goodness, it is also an act of supreme brutality towards the woman.
Ms. Knight points out that a lot of women find abortion unexpectedly distressing as it's currently practiced in the UK, with the fetal remains being whisked away unseen and uncontemplated:
Get drunk with a gaggle of girlfriends and talk about children, and there are always one or two who’ll slur something like, “I’d have a 20-year-old by now”, or, “It meant absolutely nothing at time, but it does now”, or, “If I’d known how hard I’d find getting pregnant again . . .”
In closing, Ms. Knight imagines what it must be like:
Forget the fact that the abortion pill is “safe” and “effective”, and rather imagine the mother of four who simply can’t contemplate another child. She’s been to the clinic and taken her first pill, and she doesn’t feel great. She supervises the homework, puts another batch of laundry on, sorts the children’s tea, bathtime, bedtime, then she swallows the second pill and goes to her bathroom.
I mean, if that woman was your worst enemy, you’d break into her house to rescue her, or at least hold her hand. And in the morning she’s expected to get up as though nothing had happened and get on with life, with nary a look back at the lavatory pan. I know we’re “copers”, but this is ridiculous. It is also completely obscene.
HT Wheat & Weeds, who frames it very well and adds more information. So don't just rest happy with my comments and/or the article itself. Go read what Wheat & Weeds has to say.
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