Abortion is one of those topics that makes people really, really uncomfortable. Nothing destroys the conversation at a pleasant weekend barbeque more than talk about abortion.
A couple of incidents recently made me consider why it might be that the topic is so divisively painful. I thought they were worth sharing.
If you approach a Sydney train station on a weekday afternoon, chances are you will have a complimentary copy of MX newspaper flung into your hands. There are regularly articles in the MX commenting on moral/ethical issues so I often text in a couple of sentences for the feedback pages. A while ago I sent in a comment regarding a story they ran about hundreds of mothers in India giving their baby girls sex-change operations. I questioned which was worse, the goings on in India or the 90,000 annual abortions taking place in Australia. The message was published and expectedly attracted a barrage of messages both for and against abortion.
To the credit of the newspaper it published messages on both sides for several days during which there was a definite progression of thought. Initially there were angry messages that the ‘foetus’ is not a human life; then messages from others how science unequivocally states the unborn baby is indeed human. Lastly there were messages which stated even if the unborn baby was ‘human’ it was certainly not a ‘person’. In reading the messages what struck me was the length people would go to to justify the notion that abortion could be acceptable.
The second incident was also a few months ago when the director of Family Life International Australia, Paul, was taking calls on a popular talkback station about the work they do in praying and offering material support outside abortion clinics. One woman, Sarah, called in to speak to him. She was obviously angry at what was being said and explained she was now a mother of three children but before she was married she fell pregnant and was simply “not ready to be a mother”. As part of his response, Paul pointed out to Sarah that actually she became a mother with that first pregnancy and she was in fact the mother of four children. It was obvious with those words Paul had struck a chord. Sarah’s voice because audibly upset as she rejected the notion she was the mother of an aborted child.
What became obvious in both those incidences was how raw the issue is in our society and how much people will do to block out the reality. Even though there is a lack of consistent data around abortion numbers, it is estimated that since 1994, there have been close to 1.3 million abortions in Australia. This means there is on average one aborted baby for every three babies born.
What that figure of 1.3m equals is a lot of hurt in our society, of people who have been touched by abortion. That is a lot of mothers (and fathers) who may be feeling much sorrow, guilt and hurt. Is it little wonder so many people need to (indeed have to) for their own mental wellbeing, deny abortion is actually the death of a young human life? Can you imagine if 1.3m mothers interiorised the foetus they aborted yesterday, last month or 40 years ago was a human life with a beating heart, active brain and living soul? The grief in the streets would be unbearable. Australia’s total war dead is around 100,000 yet every year we lose close to that many Australians through abortion. I can’t help but wonder how many of 12 million anti-depressant scripts written each year in Australia are linked somehow to this silent tragedy.
The point is that condemnation of the objective act of abortion must always be swiftly followed by the mention of the subjective healing that is possible and available for those who have had an abortion. Abortion will always be wrong but, sadly, the baby is not the only life affected.
See www.rachelsvineyard.org.au for advice. Abortion Grief Australia at 1300 363 550.