In her article 'Yes abortion is killing, but it's the lesser evil' Antonia Senior says that the birth of her child has brought what she describes as her "absolutist position" in favour of abortion "under siege". She beautifully describes how the birth of her daughter has helped her to realise that human life truly begins at conception:
[m]y daughter was formed at conception, and all the barely understood alchemy that turned the happy accident of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg into my darling, personality-packed toddler took place at that moment. She is so unmistakably herself, her own person — forged in my womb, not by my mothering.Despite this, Antonia Senior remains pro-abortion. She concludes that although abortion means killing an individual human life, exercising control over women's 'fertility' (by this Senior means actually giving birth, rather than exercising control of conception) is more important.
Senior says:
The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, [JS: as opposed to the loss of women's control over what Senior calls their 'fertility'] no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.Senior admits to being prepared to kill so that, in her words, she and other women possess
[the] ability to impose our will on our biology.Although Antonia Senior admits that abortion involves one person's deciding to kill another person, she also describes abortion just in terms of women's bodies (omitting mention of the unborn). She also claims that abortion is a lesser evil than the loss of women's control of their fertility, and she even says that women should be prepared to kill for such control. Although she concedes that unborn babies are human, she considers their lives disposable.
I very much suspect that Antonia Senior will be inundated with responses to this article. Some of the questions I would like to ask her are:
- are you prepared to kill humans outside the womb, as well as inside the womb in order to maintain your control?
- Do you believe that all the abortions that take place in the UK are undertaken by women with the same readiness to kill as yourself?
- What about women who may not understand the reality of abortion or share your resolve to kill and who are pressured by society and by others into having an abortion that they may later regret?
Sign up for alerts to new blog-posts and/or for SPUC's other email services
Follow SPUC on Twitter
Join SPUC's Facebook group
Please support SPUC. Please donate, join, and/or leave a legacy
