Playing up the fear factor

MARGARET RECALLS: "I suffer from congenital heart disease. After the birth of my third child, I was told by the cardiologist not to risk any further pregnancies as 'it would take 15 years off your life.'

"I subsequently became pregnant and, because of my religious qualms about abortion, did not request a termination but carried the pregnancy to term. I was unwell for several months following that confinement and never really recovered my full strength.

"When I became pregnant again three years later, I feared for my life and asked about a termination. The obstetric consultant told me that my life was not in immediate danger and so an abortion would not be legal. Nonetheless, when I made an appointment in a British clinic, my doctors here consulted with the medical staff at the clinic and sent them my notes because my health was so poor."

The debate about bringing legal abortion to the North is not about constitutional niceties or philosophical differences between pro- and anti-choice camps, but about Margaret and thousands of women like her. The question is: who has the right to decide whether pregnancies such as Margaret's should or should not be carried to full term?

Pro-choice campaigners say that it's Margaret's right, and that she ought therefore to be able to vindicate that right here. Others say that Margaret had no right to choose and therefore that the question of her being able to terminate her pregnancy here doesn't arise.

This is not the perspective in which groups which style themselves "pro-life" see the issue. They believe that a soul fuses with the zygote at the instant of fertilization and thereby confers on it a moral status equal to that of an adult human being, including, and especially, the woman within whose body the process is taking place. This belief is, of its nature, religious, rooted in faith rather than in reason. No advocate of choice denies that "pro-lifers" are entitled to their belief. What's denied is the right which they claim through the law to impose their belief on others.

It's rare--there are exceptions--for opponents of choice to put their argument openly, honestly, in religious terms. For the most part, they fling out fistfuls of factoids and shamelessly target the impressionable, particularly the young, with mendacious propaganda. They are assisted in this activity by schools, including state schools.

On BBC's Spotlight last week, an unabashed campaigner against choice displayed a placard suggesting a link between abortion and breast cancer. A great deal of research has been conducted over several decades to determine where any such link exists. There is nothing ambiguous or equivocal about the results. There is no such link. The U.S. National Cancer Institute concluded after reviewing a massive range of population, clinical and animal studies that, "Having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer."

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that, "Induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk."

But no statement of this sort, however clearly expressed, and irrespective of the prestige or authority of the body concerned, will dent the determination of "pro-lifers" to insist that having an abortion increases the likelihood of breast cancer. Spreading fear through misinformation is their stock in trade.

The lie about breast cancer will figure on placards at a rally against the extension of the 1967 Act planned for Stormont on Saturday. If the efforts of a number of schools to deliver students to the rally are successful, a good turnout is assured. The classroom mobilization has included showings of the propaganda film, The Silent Scream.

The film was made in the U.S. in 1984. Ronald Reagan gifted a copy to every member of Congress. It purports to show a real-time ultrasound depiction of the abortion of a 12-week fetus. A voice-over claims that the fetus feels pain, and screams.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has commented: "We know of no legitimate scientific information that supports the statement that a 12-week fetus experiences pain." No medically qualified person has ever been found to support the suggestion that a 12-week fetus is capable of screaming. But, again, the "pro-lifers" won't allow facts to obstruct their crusade. The discredited film continues to be shown in our schools. Last week, one 15-year-old arrived home distraught, in her mother's words "traumatized", from having been, in effect, ordered to sit and watch this 28-minute projection of emotional manipulation and political dishonesty.

This comes close to child-abuse--and it's tolerated, indeed facilitated, in our schools, including schools in the state sector.

I am not aware, but would be happy to be told, of a school in the North which allows the issue of a woman's right to choose to be discussed in an open, objective way, with both sides of the argument stated and students encouraged to explore the truth and to arrive at an informed understanding.

Our schools, with the apparent support of the minister and the department of education, and with the compliance of all the main parties, allows one partisan belief supported by no objective evidence to be presented to the coming generation as the only acceptable view. Implicitly, Margaret is presented as a murderess.

Meanwhile, young men are sent half way across the world to fight the Taliban in the name of women's rights.

First published in the Belfast Telegraph.