NAC supporters marched through the East End of London last Friday to the local Labour Party headquarters, where 9,000 signatures on a petition were handed to lan centuries. Genuine consciousness begins at birth. Viability - the ability to survive as an independent organism - can be established on average only in the eighth month of pregnancy. At conception the fertilised egg is not a human being, but only a potential human being.
Although governments issue birth certificates and not conception certificates, while a pregnant woman's passport acknowledges only one traveller, and foetuses are neither taxed nor tax deductible, the Church insists that the mass of cells scientifically known as foetal tissue are endowed with rights so powerful that they displace the woman's right to life.
In the few instances when a woman's life is endangered and the Church allows abortion, the woman is often mutilated to preserve the foetus intact. In the case of tubal pregnancy (when the fertilised egg begins to de velop in the fallopian tube) the woman would die without an abortion, but the foetus would have no chance of full development under any cırcumstances. However, so great are the rights of foetal tissue that the Church only sanctions the removal of the entire fallopian tube thereby leaving the foetus intact but sterilising one side of the woman's body.
Is the foetal right to life so great because the Church condemns murder?
The Church claims that abortion is murder and cannot bé allowed. But the Church still sanctions "just wars', capital punishment and self-defence. It justifies beforehand any policeman who kills in 'self-defence', any soldier r who kills in time of war, and any government that executes in error. But women are condemned beforehand for abortion.
While the Church has been inconsistent in its stand on abortion, and hypocritical in its stand on murder, it has always jealously guarded its right to determine what women may do with their own bodies.
What forces are involved in the anti-abortion campaign?
The Catholic Church is not the only force involved in restricting abortion. In most coun tries women face prohibitive laws as well as Church rulings.
Those who oppose abortion are mainly HO SP Mikardo MP. allowing abortion on a few grounds, the anti-abortionists immediately reactedby forming SPUC, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. It claims 8,000 members in 80 groups and can mobilise up to 80,000 on demonstration.
SPUC claims to be an independent body. although it is heavily funded and backed by both the Catholic and Anglican Churches. Mobilisations are organised directly from the pulpit, with coaches collecting people at the church door and transporting them to rallies and demonstration.
Although SPUC and Life deny any connection with the National Front, in Harrow the NF provided SPUC with stewards. SPUC denies concern with any issue except foetal rights, but in 1972 SPUC members circulated a petition for 'Public Decency' in support of The National Viewers And Listeners Association and the National Festival of Light - hardly concerned with foetal rights!
If foetal rights are not really the main issue, why is the right to abortion opp osed?
Under Roman law, no concern for foetal rights existed and abortion was normal practice. However, a law did exist punishing women who had abortion without their husband's The prime was wifely disobedience' on the 'right' to control female reproduction Policing chastity within marriage for inheritance purposes has given way to an assertion of the 'right to control and punish female sexuality.
Abortion has always been practised whether legal or not. The dangers of illegal abortion are held up as the punishment for the crime of sex. According to Dr. Mary Belton (National Board of Catholic Women), 'young girls would think twice about sleeping around' if they knew about the dangers of abortion. Since legal abortions are not dangerous and since the wages of sin ought to be death, many anti-abortionists express their punitive attitude to women by their desire to make abortion illegal.
Sir Keith Joseph last year expressed concern that overly available contraception would encourage 'casual copulation. Others have expressed anxiety that it would be difficult to control women if women could control their own bodies. Besides the prohibitions of the Church and State, the hierarchy of the medical profession plays a key role in controlling the administration and implementation of abortion regulations. In Britain a woman must find two doctors willino to annrove her shortion In other Photo: ANGELA PHILLIPS (IFL)
Why has the right to abortion bec ome such an issue in recent years?
As women have begun to demand more control over their lives, the question of control over fertility has become more of an issue. Modern technology and medical advances have meant that medical abortions are safer than ever before, and contraceptive methods more reliable. But restrictive laws deny them the right to exercise that COLLO!
The arguments of the anti-abortionists cariy less and less weight. greater access to medical knowledge Few believe that abortion leads to hardening of the 'ABORTION ON DEMAND and the struggle for Socialism Speakers: Linda Smith (NAC Steering Cttee)
and member of French MLAC Venue: Roebuck pub, 108 Tottenham Court Road (Warren Street tube).
Date: Tuesday 24 June, 7.30pm Why has the right to choose been restricted in all major countries-from the Soviet Union under Stalin to the 'advanced' capitalist countries?
listen to points made by NAC speakers at an ad hoc meeting organised during a picket of the hospital last week. Photo: ANGELA PHILLIPS (IFL)
the personality as claimed by SPUC, or a '59 per cent increase in mental disorder as claimed by SPUC's American counterpart, Birthright.
In Britain the experience over the last eight years since the introduction of the 1967 Act has been positive. The Lane Commission reported that the Act was beneficial and should not be amended, adding that it was also alleviating great suffering.
lid the 1967 Abortion Act Under the terms of the Act, 88,000 of the 109,000 women who received abortions in 1974 got them on health grounds. The Act, though still restrictive, still ineffective in implementing abortion on the National Health Service, and still abusive to women who have to prove themselves "unfit" for the role of motherhood, at least introduced the concept of a right to legal abortion and provided mang women with safe abortions.
Deaths and injuries related to self-induced or back-street abortions have decreased sharply since 1967. The known death rate dropped from 52 in 1965 to 12 in 1973. In 1973 the overall death rate for legal abortions was four per 100,000. Giving birth is about three times as dangerous.
The death rate for medical abortions would be much lower in Britain if it was not for the practice of carrying out sterilisation at the Among those not sterilised at the same time, mortality was two per 100,000. It would also be lower (about one per 100,000) if abortion was carried out before the thirteenth week of pregnancy. If the procedures for obtaining abortion were speeded up and the medical profession discouraged from sterilising women at the time of abortion, we could expect an even lower death rate.
Since the introduction of the 1967 Act there has been a marked decrease in the casualties associated with illegal back-street abortion. In 1966 septic abortion discharges from English hospitals stood at 2,500. By 1972 year had 12 abortions per 100 live births, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham area, hospitals had six or less per 100 live births.
Even where abortion facilities do exist, they are feeling the êffects of the cuts in Government expenditure. £111 million from the budget for social services. The Labour Government has not replaced this and has allowed the closure of abortion facilities as 'non-essential' services.
If these cuts continue and the James White Bill is passed, abortion under safe medical conditions, freely available on the National Health Service, would be even further away. In response to these attacks, the Women's Conference of the TUC recently passed a motion which recognising that a woman's right over her own body should be a fundamental right, demands that full and well publicised contraception facilities should be available to all women on the National Health Service and that abortion on demand should be available on the NHS.
The 1967 Act makes women go through the humiliating process of trying to convince two doctors that they are mentally or physically incapable of continuing a pregnancy. The 1967 Act assumes that the normal state of a healthy woman is to be pregnant and happy. It does not make abortion freely available on the NHS and it does not give women the right to choose.
How has the Labour Party responded to the abortion issue?
So far the Labour Party has avoided taking a stand, claiming that it is a matter of individual conscience which way MPs vote on the White Bill. Although it would be logical to red weekly 19 june 1975 The Tories took allowed the right to abortion. their lives. as population control? expect abortions to be available like any other I sources, the United Nations Fund for Popoperation on the NHS which a Labour Government set up, the Labour Party is loath to take this position. There are pressures to cut the NHS and there are deep divisions within the Labour Party on whether women should be It is no surprise to discover right-wing groups like the National Front backing SPUC but many people are surprised to find so many anti-abortionists in the leadership of the Labour Party. Vehement anti-female attitudes often emerge from the smiling facade of concern for 'the sanctity of life'. Many coercion. of the foetus worshippers in the Labour ranks in Parliament show hatred and fear of women exercising any degree of control over When Leo Abse, Labour MP and sponsor of the James White Bill, said surely if you kill a man's child that is the penultimate step to the ultimate emasculation - to the castration of the male himself, he gave expression to one of the most deeply- rooted attitudes in our society - the belief that the role of women is to be breeders of men's children.
Is the demand for abortion the same The Population Control Lobby is in favour of abortion and contraception, but their emphasis is on controlling the birth-rate. When women also demand the right to have children, the control side of their argument comes to the fore. Population control is used especially against the Third World, with Malthusian arguments that world food 'shortages' are caused by excessive Third World pop- fought for? ulation growth, causing famine in the 'underdeveloped' areas and high prices in Europe. With 40 per cent of its finance from US ulation Activities claims that the failure of the UN Poverty Programme was due to "crisis population growth in the Third World The present law that is being used in Italy to prosecute anyone having or performing an abortion was first introduced under Mussolini, banning abortion as an interference in breeding the 'pure race' In 1944, a British Royal Commission recommended pro-natal incentives because *a sub-replacement birth rate would encourage immigration and so reduce the proportion of home-bred stock'.
Black. mothers on the United States Welfare service are told they will have their payments cut if they do not accept sterilisation. Conversely, many young white women in Britain who have not produced their 2.2 per cent quota of children are not allowed sterilisation on request because they represent "socially desirable' breeding stock The pro-abortion movement believes it is the individual woman's right to control her own fertility and thus often links demands for the control of sterilisation to the demands for contraception and abortion to be made freely available.
What is meant by the slogan A woman's right to choose'?
The right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy or bear a child belongs to the individual woman. It involves the right to control one's own body. The demand for safe legal contraception and abortion that is freely available on the National Health Service is part of this demand. It also involves the right to choose or decline sterilisation without The James White Bill threatens to wipe out the limited gains of the 1967 Act. It would eliminate even the grounds of rape. James White claims: "If a drunken thug raped my younger daughter, I'd see to it that she had an abortion if she wanted it." It is a bitter irony that the recent House of Lords ruling (that a man accused of rape is not guilty if he genuinely believes 'no matter how unreasonable his belief was' that the woman consented) would now take away from James White's daughter the grounds of rape by which she might have got the abortion.
These attacks on women are all connected to the question of who controls a woman's body. Former Minister of Health, Sir Keith Joseph, is in favour of selective birth control applied only to lower income women. This anti-working class refinement of the population control lobbies makes it all the more important to explain the fundamental right of a woman to control her own reproduction How is 'The right to choose' being The fight against restrictive legislation and for a woman's right to choose is being organised by the National Abortion Campaign People are urged to support the National Abortion Campaign as a way of encouraging a mass response to the present attack and building an ongoing campaign that can take the struggle further to remove all restrictions on abortion and contraception and to make the National Health Service provide abortion, Contraception and sterilisation for women as their right to choose.
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free contraception and abortion