The recent abortion referendum in The Republic of Ireland has sparked an internal conflict between my personal beliefs on abortion. On one hand I know that I am personally pro-life, in that I believe that life starts at conception and therefore abortion is killing a human being. On the other hand, I am extremely passionate about the right of women to have control over their bodies and believe strongly in the importance of having legal, accessible abortions available for all, a pro-choice view.
Having been raised in a practicing Catholic family I grew up being told that abortion was a sin and that it was killing a human being. Although I would argue that my personally pro-life views stem more from my views on morality rather than from my religion, I am sure that my religious upbringing has had a subconscious influence on my views. Nevertheless, in the last few years I have experienced a sense of internal conflict between what I thought was the right thing to believe and my developing feminist viewpoint.
I have now resolved that although I am personally pro-life, I am politically pro-choice. This means that I personally perceive abortion to be killing a human being and that terminating a life due to inconvenient timing is wrong. However, I do not believe that my personal opinion on abortion should be imposed on others, and I do believe that women who do want an abortion should be able to have one legally, safely and for free. I decided to write this article because I don’t think that there should be such a clear cut divide between the ‘Pro-Life’ and ‘Pro-Choice’ viewpoints, and that people who are personally pro-life should be willing to support pro-choice public policy for a number of reasons.
Firstly, public policy should not be based upon a religious viewpoint. Although there is not an official separation of the church and state in the United Kingdom, as there is in the United States, public policy is not centred around a particular religion and all faiths are tolerated. This is important because it allows for the inclusion of people from all religious backgrounds, making them feel like their views are represented in politics, and enables a multi-faith society to live together without conflict – all important elements of a successful liberal democracy. However, this has largely not been the case in the Republic of Ireland in which the constitution was written in close accord with the teachings of the Catholic church, with Dr John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin to-be having been heavily involved in it’s drafting. Although the influence of the Catholic Church appears to have weakened in recent years with the legalisation of gay marriage in 2015 and the landslide decision to overturn the 8th Amendment, legalising abortion, last month.
Furthermore, making abortion illegal doesn’t stop it happening, it just prevents it from happening safely. Women in the Republic of Ireland who wanted abortions either had to order illegal abortion pills or travel to the United Kingdom, an option not available to many due to the expense. The use of illegal abortion pills is extremely dangerous and risks the lives of the women taking them, especially since if something goes wrong these women often won’t seek medical help for fear of being imprisoned for breaking the law. People who are pro-life should consider this, as illegal abortions put two lives as risk, not just one. Therefore, if abortions will take place regardless of the law, it is better to vote for pro-choice policies to ensure that at least the lives of the women are protected by enabling safe abortions to take place under the care of trained medical professionals. Moreover, if people are truly pro-life and want to reduce the number of abortions that take place then there should be free and easily accessible contraception provided for all and increased education on protecting against pregnancy. Yet this is rarely advocated by pro-lifers and birth control still remains taboo among the Catholic community.
Those who are pro-life should also remember that abortion is a very sensitive subject and that the personal decisions that women make over their bodies should be respected. This is particularly important in cases where a women has been raped and the emotional trauma of carrying the child could be extremely damaging. It is unjust to judge these women without walking in their shoes.
Ultimately, despite being personally pro-life I believe that women should have control over their own bodies, that religion should not dictate the law and that the importance of having legal abortions available for situations in which continuing the pregnancy would damage a woman’s mental and physical health outweighs the fact that legalising abortion could increase abortion rates slightly, therefore I am politically pro-choice.
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