Here in Britain we have people who are surprised that midwives should have views about abortions and the length of time in which they can still be legal. But in America the front-running candidate to be the next Republican president thinks that abortion should always be a crime and everyone involved must be arrested – and much of the discussion assumes that causing a babe not to be born is the same as stifling it in its pram.
What makes one rather doubt the validity of such people’s concern for a helpless baby is the fact that so many of the believers who deplore abortion are equally against contraception – so what they are really against is sex between the wrong people, those who are not legally joined by the religion in which so many of the pro-lifers believe.
But there’s a lot to be said for preventing babies from being born who are going to be unwelcome and therefore have a rotten childhood. A few years ago the crime figures of New York were suddenly much lower than they had been, and researchers linked the fact to high numbers of abortions in the year when the potential criminals would otherwise have been born.
The hope for “every child to be a wanted child” is of course best achieved by some women not getting pregnant in the first place, but whatever role a baby is going to play it should surely not be that of a punishment for its mother’s “unsuitable behaviour”.
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