Are you sitting down? Because this disturbing news might send you over the edge into catatonic shock: the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Britain’s largest abortion provider, thinks women know best when it comes to their own reproductive health. Scandalous!!
Of course, that’s not exactly The Telegraph‘s angle:
Ann Furedi, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said that pregnant women and doctors actively “pretend” that the women’s mental health is at risk so that they can sign off abortions without questions being asked.
And the chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners said a woman simply saying that she did not want to be pregnant now counted as enough evidence to justify an abortion.
In Britain, a woman can get an abortion up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy if she has the approval of two doctors who confirm that the risk to her physical or mental health (or that of the fetus) would be greater if the pregnancy was carried to term. According to The Telegraph, about 98 per cent of the 190,000 abortions performed every year in England and Wales are approved on the grounds that the mother’s mental health would be at risk. This, apparently, is a farce and an outrage. Ironically, abortion advocates agree.
In a documentary called “The Great Abortion Divide” that premieres tonight, Furedi said the current law makes “actors” of both doctor and patient, because, as she once wrote, “women have to pretend they will have a nervous breakdown if they continue the pregnancy, and doctors pretend to believe them.” In other words: why can’t we cut the bullshit and let the woman decide regardless of her circumstances?
Prof Clare Gerada, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said “there isn’t a blood test that one can use to predict whether someone’s going to get mental health problems” and that “what we have is what the woman tells us. It isn’t for me to judge her or be moralistic. It’s for me to explore potential other options but to take her at face value.”
Exactly. The Telegraph routinely runs sensational “exposes” on crafty women who find ways to beat the abortion system, but they always just prove that Britain’s law needs to be updated because the only person who knows whether a woman should get an abortion is the woman herself.
Ooh, but what about the married mother who told the documentary makers that she had her second abortion after discovering that she was pregnant and feeling “it wasn’t the right time to throw another baby into the mix” but wished that someone had stopped her and said, “Well you have to see a counsellor before you do this”? Guess what: you’re an adult, and if you wanted to get counseling before making that decision, you should’ve gone to counseling! But mandating therapy/a doctor’s moral signature implies that women don’t know what’s good for them. And they most certainly do.