I feel sure that most people will admire Sarah Palin's beautifully honest account of how she felt and what she thought when she first discovered she was expecting her son Trig, who has down's syndrome. For a fleeting moment, Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate said, she considered her "options" - in other words, she considered abortion.
She said: "'I had to ask myself, 'Was I going to walk the walk or was I just going to talk the talk'".
As David O'Steen, executive director of the US National Right to Life Committee, told the Washington Post: "I think every one of us, every human being, has had it go through their mind, the possibility of an act they know is wrong - and then rejected."
Elizabeth Shipp, a US pro-abortion campaigner, is reported as saying: "If I didn't know any better, I'd say governor Palin sounds remarkably pro-choice."
No, Elizabeth. Sarah Palin is not "pro-choice", she's a human being. As Alison Davis, the leader of No Less Human, a disability rights group which campaigns against abortion and other anti-life practices, put it to me today: "I greatly admire Sarah Palin and now I admire her all the more for her honesty. Abortion is permitted in the US for any reason throughout the nine months of pregnancy, so it's no wonder that mothers-to-be under pressure might consider it, even fleetingly. Laws which permit the killing of the unborn put mothers-to-be under inhuman pressure when they are most vulnerable - and that's one of the many reasons why they must be changed."
