The Horror of Back Alley Abortions

 

A TV series I have enjoyed binge-watching, BBC’s Call the Midwife, has decided to go for relevance and wade deliberately into politically charged issues. It is a perhaps muted model of the general problem with films and TV in recent years.

They had already threaded in intersex, and homosexuality. Even though neither fits plausibly into the likely work encounters of a midwife. They had already introduced black and South Asian characters, who then of course were shown to experience discrimination; and a black midwife has shown up as a new lead. And she is, of course, an entirely admirable character, with no dark edges about her. No crustiness, no struggle with alcohol, no illicit loves.

Then they brought up the issue of abortion.

The series is set in 1960s Britain. Abortion was still illegal. The series shows young women getting “back alley” abortions and suffering dire consequences—due to unsanitary conditions and inexpert practitioners.

Worse, the abortionist is portrayed as a decent sort who thought she was helping women. And repented as soon as she was convinced women were being harmed by her incompetence.

No mention is made of the health of the child. The child does not matter. Good people do not care about killing children. Chillingly, in a show about midwives. No mention is made of the alternatives of simply not having sex outside of marriage, or putting the child up for adoption. These are apparently literally unthinkable.

The clumsily intended moral is that abortions must be legal. Because, apparently, women “must” have abortions, and the only concern is that the abortions be performed in the best possible circumstances.

A sane view would be the opposite: if illegal abortions are dangerous, abortion is dangerous. This alone is reason to ban it, since it is always a voluntary procedure. And this even before we consider the key question, the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.