Lots to comment. Too much in fact.
Ann Furedi say that when it comes to abortion, she wonders "who decides?" which abortions are moral or not.
Funny, but, we don't have trouble deciding when it comes to other morally-related hot button issues.
Abortion is supposed to be an exception?
She writes that we should "trust women", as if that's enough. Don't examine what we're trusting women to do-- kill human beings-- just trust them.
I don't trust anyone to kill human beings. I don't trust human beings-- male or female-- to do a lot of things, because some actions are wrong and should never be performed.
She mentions a study that was done by the BPAS, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. They perform tax-payer funded abortions.
In this study, the researchers recorded the situations of women who sought abortions but were denied because their pregnancies were over the legal limit.
Ann Furedi seems to think that all these abortions should have been granted.
Consider this case-- a woman from the Indian sub-continent seeking an abortion at 30 weeks:
Thought she was about 18 weeks pregnant. Has an arranged marriage in the Indian sub-continent in the summer with an expectation that she would be a virgin. She had told no one of her situation because of fear, embarrassment and shame. An abortion was not possible because she was over the current gestational limit. Bpas counsellors arranged for her to have help to mediate with her family and potential emergency accommodation, should she need it.
I presume that this woman had sex before marriage, and therefore the pregnancy is evidence of her non-virginal status, which is the problem.
So let me get this straight. Ann Furedi thinks that this woman should be allowed to have her baby killed at 30 weeks gestation-- an age which we know the fetus suffers pain-- because her family might not be mad that she wasn't a virgin, and that might cause embarrassment and shame?
You might counter that she is probably in a very vulnerable position, being female from the Indian sub-continent.
Could Be.
Then why not empower her?
If her future husband is her meal-ticket, and her family would disown her because of this pregnancy, and her pregnancy ruins future prospects for marriage (at least in her mind) then isn't the problem her situation, not the baby?
Maybe this is just a hunch, but I bet she doesn't really want the abortion. The overwhelming majority of women who carry to thirty weeks don't want abortions, even if they had wanted one earlier.
I think that she just doesn't know what else to do.
But trust women! Don't try to find a way around the problem. Just do the abortion, no questions asked. And if a human being has to die because of it, well who cares? As long as the woman's autonomy is maintained, that's the main thing. The woman, the father, the family, society-- none of these is responsible for this unborn child as far as feminists are concerned. Because the notion of responsibility would imply that you have an obligation to take care of this child, whether you like it or not.
Responsibility is so inconvenient that way.
H/T: Bound4Life.com
