Untimely birth

Prime minister David Cameron & the entire Conservative party spin machine could be forgiven for asking themselves ‘How did this happen’ at the weekend, on the eve of the party conference.

Our unfeasibly boyish-looking, father of two, 45-year old Secretary of State for Health earned himself the main front page headline on Saturday’s Times with his support for a 12-week limit on legal abortion. ‘Insulting to women’ reads the sub-head.

Then there is a double-page spread on the inside news pages (6&7), complete with scan pictures of foetuses at various stages of development, an analysis by the papers health correspondent including unfriendly quotes from the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists, & highly personal contributions from star columnists Caitlin Moran & Alice Thomson.

You have to work through to pages 38 & 39 of the paper to find out how this came about.

A regular Saturday feature, another double-page spread, an interview/profile of a person in the news conducted by, usually, two journalists, most often, I think (without keeping a tally) both female: this week Rachel Sylvester & Alice Thomson ‘meet’ Jeremy Hunt.

His abortion comments come right at the end, after discussion of the reforms to the NHS structure, the treatment of the elderly, hospital closures, the nanny state, protecting the NHS budget, & assisted suicide. The editor of this page thought that the nanny state provided the most eye-catching quote for the headline: ‘I don’t want a fat tax. I like my Coca-Cola & crisps.’

It is not clear from the way the article is written whether the remarks about abortion were prompted by a specific question or were offered up spontaneously. It would not be surprising if the journalists had raised it - Maria Miller, who took over Mr Hunt’s old job as Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport in last month’s cabinet reshuffle, sparked renewed interest in the issue when she said last week that she favours a 20-week cut off, & Mr Hunt’s vote for a 12-week limit when the issue last came before Parliament is a matter of record.

For of course abortion policy is regarded as a question of individual conscience in this country & MPs are free to vote on it accordingly.

But what makes his view worrying to many is precisely his current job. To quote him directly from the interview ‘You go into politics to make a difference & in this job every single meeting makes a difference to hundreds of thousands of lives.’

Also worrying to some is his claim to have (fashionably) 'considered the evidence' before arriving at his view. In this case it seems to be the evidence ‘about the moment we should deem life to start.’

It is possible that this view would have been shared by RH Tawney, who argued that ‘The first step towards an improvement in social life is to judge our social conduct by strict moral standards. I venture to say – though it sounds heresy – that there are certain sorts of behaviour which we know to be right, & certain others which we know to be wrong’, but it is worrying for those who take the view that ‘evidence-based policy’ demands a utilitarian calculus of benefits & harms, rather than a more rigid attitude based on a moral, philosophical or religious principle, such as ‘a human life becomes sacred (or sacrosanct) the moment that it begins’.

Mr Hunt denies that he holds his view by reason of his Christian faith, but nor does he believe that abortion at an earlier stage should be made illegal, which suggests some other unspoken assumptions, in particular the one which says that any sane, sensible & well-informed woman would realise that she is pregnant in good time to seek an abortion under a revised law on grounds which are already acceptable. If only.

The fact that over 90% of legal abortions in England & Wales do indeed take place before the twelfth week suggests that this is overwhelmingly the case, or at least that there is no widespread desire for later abortion. But it still leaves several thousand women a year who would realise their predicament, (a predicament shared by other members of their existing family) too late to do anything legal about it under a new timetable.

I would normally shy away from speculating in print about how the Secretary of State’s personal circumstances may influence his views, but I think there is an interesting point to be made here. Mr Hunt married in 2009 & is father to two young children which (& this really is presumptuous of me) suggests no nasty dilemmas to be faced. But his wife is Chinese - & as the Times profile reminds us, he travelled to her childhood home in the mountains of southwest China to ask her father’s permission for her hand in marriage & they had a traditional Chinese wedding. The horrors of some aspects of the enforcement of China’s One Child policy are well known – not least through the recent world-wide publicity given to a husband’s photos of his wife as she lay recovering from an enforced (very) late term abortion. The closer you feel to such horrors the more you might be inclined to draw the line earlier rather than late.

Coming at it from the other side it is – touchingly or ludicrously – ironic that, when asked, this millionaire, public school educated son of an admiral should describe himself as ‘probably half way’ between posh & pleb.

Under-age, ill-educated girls from the lowest social classes are among those who, it is claimed, would, through delay induced by ignorance or fear of owning up to being pregnant, be harmed by any lowering of the abortion time limit. In fact many of these girls delay precisely to avoid any suggestion of what they, their friends, family & community consider to be no different from murdering a living baby. While any girl from the posher half of the class divide, especially one educated at great parental expense & with the prospect of an Oxbridge degree& a glittering career before her, would find it practically impossible, even if she should be so inclined, to resist the pressure from those around her to get rid of her mistake as quickly as possible.

Mr Hunt is right however when he says that ‘you can be a strong feminist & have a view one way or the other on abortion’, though more so on the question of time limits than on the basic issue of choice, as this makes clear.

In truth most women hope to be lucky enough never to have to face that choice for themselves, though it would be wrong to conclude from this that abortion leads to uniquely lasting regret & emotional pain. Any woman who has had, or failed to have, or has lost a child, under whatever circumstances, will have at least moments of ‘What if?’

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