Disability

Abortion can be carried out at any stage of pregnancy, up to birth, on babies who are found to have a disability. A woman who is told that her unborn baby will be born with a disability is likely to find herself guided by her medical advisers towards abortion. The option of accepting those born with disabilities and helping the family to cope with the practical and emotional difficulties of raising their child will often not be presented.

The abortion of children with disabilities attacks the most vulnerable, those most in need of help, and by doing so it labels those with a disability as inferior and of less value than the able-bodied.

Pressure on parents to abort children with disabilities
Supporters of abortion claim that a woman should be given the choice to end a pregnancy that she "does not want". The Association for Improvements in Maternity Services reported having “a stream of complaints” from women who tried to refuse pre-natal tests and were “bullied or treated like pariahs.” They noted that this had the effect of some women choosing not to have any pre-natal care until 24 weeks to avoid pressure to be screened and to abort if a disability was detected. ( Excerpts from Independent – “Voluntary HIV Tests” Letter by Beverley A. Lawrence Beech [Hon. Chair] and Jean Robinson [Hon. Research Officer] AIMS 16 August 1999 in A Disabled Person's Perspective on Eugenic Abortion, Alison Davis, Coordinator of No Less Human, a group within SPUC, March 2003).

Extending the abortion mentality
Sadly, some parents have asked to be allowed to end the lives of their young children with disabilities and the courts have agreed to the starvation of several brain-damaged adult patients.

Jim and Bronwen Stewart declared they wanted their 2 year old son Ian to be given a lethal injection, (Mail on Sunday, "Should He Be Allowed to Die", 16 July 1995) and Con and Fiona Creedon declared their intention to seek legal permission to starve their son Thomas (also 2) to death (Mail on Sunday, "Forced to Stay Alive", 23 July 1995). In the case of Thomas Creedon press reports claimed that he was in "constant pain". This was denied in a Court hearing before Sir Stephen Brown, President of the Family Division of the High Court, who said: "it is believed he does not suffer significant pain or distress."

If the child was in pain then painkillers should be given. He should not be starved or given a lethal injection. In other cases, doctors in Britain have admitted to killing babies with disabilities by sedating and starving them to death, even though this is against the law.

"This is a form of killing by neglect, and should be opposed by all who care about justice and human rights". ("Q&A on disability", No Less Human, Alison Davis, September 2003)

The lesson of these cases is that abortion devalues life, especially the life of those with disabilities. The reason for aborting babies with disabilities is their disability; this mentality might then affect babies outside of the womb.

In the case of Ian Stewart, his mother argued: "Why, when abortion is legal, when a mother has the right to end a perfect life, can I, as his mother, not end this damaged one?"(loc. cit.). This idea claims that there are two classes of people, the "damaged" and the "perfect," and that the damaged are worth less than the perfect.

A lady with a disability who chairs a campaign group in Jersey, wrote about what she, as a person with a disability, called, ‘her own history’:

The views of those who live with a disability or who care for those with disabilities are so different from the attitudes of many in the medical profession.
"Agnes Marshall was told her daughter Rachel would not live to see her first birthday. Rachel will be 10 years old on 27 th July 2003. She is one of only 50 children in the world who have Hydranencephaly, a condition in which most of the brain is missing. Rachel’s contribution to the world is simply her existence, which elicits so much love from all who meet her. Children like her are, however, in the forefront of those who many people think “should be aborted.” Agnes has other ideas, saying "She’s so loving the way she looks at me. I wouldn’t want to change her in any way. In fact I’d have 10 of her". (A Disabled Person's Perspective on Eugenic Abortion, Alison Davis, Coordinator of No Less Human, a group within SPUC, March 2003)

Indeed for many people living with a disability their lives are made difficult by the attitudes of others towards their disability, rather than by the disability itself.

For more information on disability issues see No Less Human.

Rape and incest

Even those who are against abortion in the majority of cases argue that abortion should be available for women who are raped. Yet pregnancy rarely results from rape. The majority of abortions (over 99% according to 1987 Alan Guttmacher Institute Statistics) are for far more commonplace reasons than rape or incest. Said Vicki Seltzer in Volume 32 of the Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association:

Laws to allow abortion for women pregnant after being raped shows that "hard cases make bad law". Dr Aleck Bourne was acquitted in court after performing an abortion on a raped girl. This then paved the way for abortion under many other circumstances in England. Dr Bourne was appalled that his case was being used to allow abortion on demand and so he became a founder member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in 1967.

When the 1967 Abortion Act was being debated, its sponsor David Steel MP agreed to withdraw a clause using rape as grounds for abortion because of the impossibility of producing proof. He accepted that this clause would lead to doctors giving abortions simply because a woman claimed she had been raped.

In the United States Roe v Wade case in 1973, abortion was declared a constitutional right. It was always assumed that the case involved a pregnancy resulting from rape. In 1987, the woman known as ‘Jane Roe’ (real name, Norma McCorvey) admitted that her claim that she had been raped was a lie. (This revelation was also reported in the British press, e.g. Daily Mail, 10 Sept 1987).

Pregnancy rarely occurs after rape. The physical and psychological trauma of violent sexual assault are part of the reason that pregnancy is rare. Also a woman is only fertile for 2 and a half days in her 28 day cycle so this means there is only a 10% chance of her actually being fertile at the time of the rape taking place. In addition for fertile couples having consensual sex there is only a 3% chance of becoming pregnant. The odds of pregnancy occurring are therefore low even without taking into account the fact that the woman or the man may be infertile, the age of the woman, the woman may be on the pill and the effect of the physical and psychological trauma on the woman’s normal pattern of ovulation. In cases of violent sexual assault the incidence of pregnancy is therefore reported as low as 0. This rate will of course be higher when cases of “date-rape” or non-consensual sex are included, this is because such cases tend not to be of a violent nature and therefore have less of an traumatic impact on the woman psychologically. (Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Willke, Why Can't We Love Them Both, Heritage House 76, Inc, 1998)

Where pregnancy does occur abortion is presented as the solution to the problem. But abortion does not remove the problem, as the problem is not the baby but the rape itself. Claims that the baby will be a reminder of the rape are misplaced. A woman who has been raped does not need a reminder; she will remember every day of her life. Abortion does nothing to alleviate the rape. It only allows society to forget about the rape and pretend that justice has been done.

Presented as a solution, abortion becomes only another problem. A woman who has been raped is a victim of severe trauma. Through abortion she then suffers another severe trauma. The first trauma of rape is then added to by the loss of her child and the feeling that they are now both victims of the rape.

Abortion does absolutely nothing to stop even one rape from occurring.

For a mature child to discover that their conception was a result of rape it can be devastating. However, to know that the mother decided to continue the pregnancy can often make the child feel a more valued member of society and more loved by the mother. The child knows that in spite of the circumstances of conception the mother still wanted him/her. The mother did not see her child’s life as not worth living but instead chose to have her baby rather than end his/her life through abortion.

Abortion adds to the whole horrible rape equation the injustice of punishing the child by ending his/her life. Feminist author Mary Meehan phrased it sensitively in the 1983 Summer Human Life Review:

SPUC Scotland Paper 2
The Case Against Abortion
Revised June 2005

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