“Pro-lifers” in the UK are dicks. Again.

Welcome to the 1968 abortion-law debate. 40 years later. Parliament is scheduled to vote on the Human Embryology Bill next week, which includes a whole raft of laws from allowing parents to artificially create a foetus to produce donor cells for a sick sibling, to using the empty shells of animal eggs to grow human tissue from cell nuclei (avoiding the need to fertilise human eggs with human sperm – bizarrely enough to appease the religious right). The most divisive part of the Bill, however, is a proposal to slash the time limit for a woman to have an abortion from 24 weeks of pregnancy to 20 weeks. The basis of the argument for this is that anti-abortionists believe that premature babies can and do now survive from 20 weeks onwards. Let’s examine that belief, shall we?

 

A gentleman by the name of Professor David Field, a consultant neo-natal paediatrician from the neo-natal unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary carried out two studies, the first between 1994 and 1999, and the second between 2000 and 2005. The study was over a huge population with no pre-selection of candidates – all premature births in the study’s catchment were included.

 

What those studies showed was this: only 18% of babies born at 23 weeks survived – in BOTH periods. Survivability of super-premature (pre 24 week) babies has not improved at all. The study went further: of all the babies born at 22 weeks or earlier, none survived. Not a single solitary one, in either study.

 

What’s the counter argument?

 

Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP sums it up: “…this report insults the intelligence of the public and MPs…. Where has all the money that has been pumped into neonatal services gone, then? [the report is] tosh produced by the pro choice lobby”

 

Um…. The money’s gone to trying to improve survivability? Trying takes money – it doesn’t, however, guarantee success. And…. Her opinion is more valid than a ton of evidence? Why? Sorry, but bullshit!

 

What should we believe? Two peer-reviewed, published studies carried out over large populations and several years by a highly qualified doctor in the field? Or a neo-conservative, religious zealot’s unqualified rantings?

 

This is a real no-brainer if you examine it: “pro-lifers” know that they can’t get abortion banned – it has 76% public support in the UK – but that isn’t going to stop them trying to erode it over time: Drop it to 20 weeks…. Now 18…. Now 15…. Now 12…. Now 4 weeks…. Now ban the morning-after pill…

 

It’s regressive and it’s harmful to force women to bear children which they’re incapable of raising, which they do not want, which will be severely disabled by genetic disorders or the mother’s drug or alcohol use, which are the result of a rape, which are incestuous…

 

Religious right-whingers: Your day has been and it has gone in the UK. Your ridiculous beliefs are not relevant to our lives, and people resent your constant interference and attention seeking. Fuck off and grow up, learn to take responsibility for the world yourself instead of blaming the mythical sky-daddy, and stop fucking with everybody else’s lives and freedoms on the basis of your own ignorant beliefs. In short, just fuck off.