My modest proposal
It's surely time we dropped our cynicism and got behind the government's National Abortion Drive, another noble attempt to kickstart our floundering economy.
The United Kingdom has made great strides of late in this area, recently overtaking France in the number of abortions performed annually, the figures showing the largest increase since this sort of stuff was legalised. The door, then, is already ajar. All we need to do is push a little.
Our elected representatives were intent on doing just that this week by voting for an amendment that will now decriminalise abortion right up to the day of birth. I don't wish to seem churlish, but to me this demonstrates a marked lack of imagination and ambition. Why not extend the period at which abortions are legal to several months, or even years, after the birth of the child?
I understand that technically this would be known as 'infanticide' rather than 'abortion', but terminology should not stand in our way. There are plenty of left-wing ethicists, such as Pete Singer, who believe that infanticide is justifiable in many cases, using broadly the same arguments as those used to justify late-term abortions – that the foetus, or child, could not exist independently without its mother.
Yes, I hear you cry, this is the same Pete Singer who thinks it's OK to shag dogs. But, as ever, you are missing the context and the caveats. Dr Singer believes that you may give your dog one only if it is part of a rich and caring relationship and does not involve coercion. I understand that it is sometimes a tricky issue to obtain written consent from a Dobermann Pinscher and that given the limited intellectual capacity of many dogs, they may not fully understand what they're getting themselves involved in. But Dr Singer is, as I have said, an ethicist, so I do not feel sufficiently qualified in challenging his jurisdiction on this issue.
In any case, we are digressing. It is on the subject of infanticide that I've corralled Dr Singer into the argument and his advice here seems wholly sound. His views are nuanced – infanticide is justifiable only in cases of disability or, as he has put it, unwantedness. That is, if you've had the kid for a couple of weeks and decide it's an absolutely ghastly creature and all too much like hard work, you are allowed to terminate its existence.
Pete does not offer advice on how to go about this business – poison? A rolling pin? Fed to the Rottweiler before your evening act of caring and consensual canine love? – but that's because he has much weightier matters on which he must adjudicate. His position, then, is what we might call ultra-utilitarian. It seems to me he might entirely agree with Jonathan Swift on the efficacy of eating children to assuage starvation, and the fact that he may not have realised that Jonny was having a laugh does not, for me, diminish the value of his arguments.
Our abortion rate is soaring – and likely to soar still further if the likes of the Labour MP Stella Creasy get their way – although we still have some distance to go before we can match the achievements of the real abortion champions: countries such as Vietnam, Madagascar and Guinea-Bissau.
Decriminalising abortion from 24 weeks to the day of birth will undoubtedly provide a fillip to the market and, frankly, given what we know about a foetus at 24 weeks – it has eyelashes, eyebrows, hair on the head and lungs and would be able to survive with medical care were it to be prematurely born – there doesn't seem to be a great moral difference, does there? Certainly not if you take the utilitarian view – and we should be honest here: what other view can there possibly be these days?
In a sense, aborting a child at nine months is no more shocking than being able to go shopping on a Sunday, a notion which once appalled the pious in our society but which we now take for granted as our human right – to be able to buy crap on Sunday, just like on every other day of the week. And we are a much happier nation as a consequence.
There are a few reasons for the huge rise in abortions recently. First, they are much easier to come by, as the medical clergy have become far more indulgent than used to be the case. Second, there has been the lessening of stigma regarding the procedure, especially now that we have banned those God-bothering dinosaurs from standing silently near abortion clinics praying and what have you. And third, because we have long since jettisoned the archaic principle that sexual intercourse is in some way related to having a child and that women (and men) who do not want a child would be best minded to refrain.
Oddly – and this is truly mysterious – although we have got rid of that old dictum and ensured that everybody, everywhere, can get hold of contraceptive devices in myriad forms at any time of the day or night, this has not resulted in a reduction of unwanted pregnancies. Quite the reverse. Those silly old things, morals, seemed to have exerted a certain influence back in the day. Luckily, today we know it is a human right to behave without a vestige of morality.
I should end with an apology to all the women readers who believe that men should not delve into the subject of abortions because it is something which doesn't concern them. It is, after all, a woman's body we are talking about, and she has a right to do whatever she wants with it. My only excuse is that as a columnist I very frequently write about things which have nothing to do with me directly, such as those rape-gang people. And at least the feminists urging decriminalisation know that I'm on their side.
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