And Why did You have an Abortion Exactly?

I’m not going to critique Bel Mooney’s recent piece in the Daily Fail. Too easy.

You ‘mislaid’ your Pills, Ms. Mooney? Because you were moving house, Ms. Mooney? And so had a totally justifiable abortion? Unlike all those other slappers who have them just because they can’t be bothered to use contraception? And your failure to use contraception was different because..? Because?? Anybody? Ever heard of condoms, Ms. Mooney? Ever heard of abstinence, Ms. Mooney? I bet you have because I bet you’d advocate it for teenage girls, wouldn’t you, eh? Dirty whores that they are.

Despite moving house myself recently, I have inexplicably failed to find myself pregnant. I think that says a lot.

No, I’m not linking, there madness lies. Don’t read it unless you’ve recently had a brain bypass.

Actually, do read it and understand again the problem with defining the ‘correctness’ of abortion based on the circumstances in which it was had.

Nah, fuck it, just read this instead, from TMae over at Life V 2.0:

‘I had an abortion.

I’m not going to tell you how old I was when I had it.

I’m not going to tell you what the circumstances around the pregnancy were. 

I’m not going to tell you whether birth control was used or not.

I’m not going to tell you whether it was a wanted or an unwanted pregnancy.

I’m not going to tell you how far along the pregnancy was.

I’m not going to tell you whether there was a genetic abnormality, or whether my life was endangered by the pregnancy.‘

Right fucking on. Read the rest of it. It’s fab.

This really hits the spot in the abortion debate. Goodness, no, I don’t mean the ‘pro v. anti’ debate. There is no debate with those ‘pro-lifer’ (oh, if only speech marks could drip sarcasm) idiots who want to send women back to aborting with coat hangers.

I mean the real debate with those who think abortion is kinda-OK-ish-I-guess if a woman’s been raped, or there’s a fatal abnormality, or her life’s in danger, or she’s moving house.

OK, so including that last one means I’m debating with Bel Mooney all by her lonesome (you get it, Bel? Nobody’s buying your shit! even Daily Fail readers can fail to spot the difference between a woman who fails to take contraceptive measures and a woman who fails to take contraceptive measures!), so scratch that one.

We all make this mistake. Even the most pro-choice amongst us. We get into the debate, we argue our case using examples of why the right to abortion is necessary. We, mistakenly but with good intentions, try to argue with the anti-woman brigade by using examples that, we think, even the most intellectually-challenged amongst us can get to grips with.

But by doing so, we lose sight of the truly important fact. The right to abortion isn’t important because bad things happen to good people. It’s important because women must have the right to decide whether or not to have a baby. It’s really that simple.

By arguing about the why, we appear to accept that abortion is inherently morally wrong, but morals being all relative and such, there are exceptions. What we need to be saying is: there are no exceptions. Every woman (sheesh, OK, even you, Mooney) is entitled to the right to control her own fertility.

Never apologise. Never explain.

I think we can all thank TMae for reminding us of this fact.