The elder of my half-brothers is almost seventeen years old. He’s busy studying physics and chemistry for A-level, playing around with a BBC microcomputer he salvaged from somewhere, and saving up his Education Maintenance Allowance in the hopes of one day being able to afford a Landrover.<\/p>\n
He owes his existence to an abortion our mother had some fourteen months before he was born.<\/p>\n
She chose to end her pregnancy around the halfway point when she learned that the fetus had Downs syndrome. My half-brother was conceived on what would have been the due date had she chosen to continue the earlier pregnancy. If she hadn’t had access to abortion, if she’d had to carry the fetus to term and give birth, there is no way my half-brother could have been conceived.<\/p>\n
My half-brother is a walking refutation of the Feminists For Life contention that “abortion pits women against their children”. Let us accept for the moment the pro-life formulation and agree to describe the fetus as one of my mother’s daughters. This (potential) daughter is pitted, not against her mother but against her (potential) brother. Abortion allowed my mother to decide which of her potential children she wanted to carry into actuality.<\/p>\n
If she had not been allowed to make that decision, I would have a half-sister instead of a half-brother – not such a great difference. But my mother would have, instead of a son she bore by choice, a daughter she bore because she had no choice – an immense difference. It’s not just my brother who owes a debt of gratitude to the abortion that allowed her to have a child she felt she could raise: the whole family is better off because of it.<\/p>\n
Pro-lifers like to accuse pro-choicers of thinking that disabled people, or children conceived by rape, have no right to exist. (A better summary of the pro-choice view would be that no fetus has a right to exist – they exist by the goodwill of their mothers, and will do so until they develop the ability to live independantly of women’s bodies.) But by saying my mother had no right to an abortion – no right to choose which of her potential children she wanted to give birth to – pro-lifers are saying my half-brother has no right to exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The elder of my half-brothers is almost seventeen years old. He’s busy studying physics and chemistry for A-level, playing around with a BBC microcomputer he salvaged from somewhere, and saving up his Education Maintenance Allowance in the hopes of one … Continue reading