Member

The language of reproductive rights and healthcare is used, but the word “healthcare” has lost all meaning if it extends to a woman who cynically kills a baby shortly before birth to suit her own convenience or, perhaps, her family’s preferences. If abortion were merely healthcare, we would not have abortion law. The framing of healthcare, I am afraid, conveniently spares people from facing both the agonising moral conflicts involved in late abortion, and also the consequences of bad policies. Those who use this language would prefer that the cost in human lives goes unmentioned. They are not interested in, and do not want to plan for, the kind of serious monitoring that is needed to understand the brutal arithmetic that would reveal itself in future if and when the price of being kind to women wanting late abortions is just too high; the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury recognised this deficiency in her remarks.