Life as we know it?
Seeing the gruesome images of abortion circulated by pro-Life groups is not an experience you are likely to forget. The third attempt, at Friday's Council of the Oxford Pro-life society to repeal the ban on their advertising was certain to command attention even if the result was a foregone conclusion. As a firm believer in every woman's right choose, it was reassuring to see a continuing check on the public exposure of a group that has shown itself to be directive and liable to mislead. But the issues surrounding the Life charity are complex, and wider than the Oxford debate.
Since abortion was legalised in Britain by David Steel's Abortion Act of 1967, pro-lifers have tried to overturn it, and the Life group was set up in 1969 committed to "upholding the utmost respect for human life from fertilisation onwards". Currently nearly one in four pregnancies in Britain now terminated.
Lucy Underwood and Naomi Hills, of the Oxford University Pro-Life Society, changed their tactics somewhat in this latest endeavour to up the profile of their national counterpart, by framing the motion as advocating a pro-choice policy. The ban on Life advertising in OUSU publications was enacted in 2000 after investigations by Ethics Committee, into the counselling service, website and conversations with a counsellor, found the organisation to be directive in its anti-abortion views. This accusation is continually refuted by its members, and most vehemently by Oxford's pro-Life counsellor, Paula Flynn who told me she sees the ban as an issue of free speech and freedom of choice.
However, the ethos of the Life organisation is anathema to choice, in that it advocates a stance, despite the proffered distinction between the campaigning and counselling arms of the organisation. The counselling service claims to provide impartial advice to pregnant women, and not to judge, although Life counsellors all subscribe wholesale to the company policy and are not required to have a counselling qualification, but trained by the organisation. Mentally divorcing the counselling service from the radical campaigning aspects of the organisation and their tactics is also difficult.
Hence advertising by Life motion is unacceptable to the student body, which is the prime market for abortion (the 20-24 age group being statistically most likely to undergo the procedure). If its choice we want, there are non-directive organisations that provide both pre- and post-abortion counselling.
This said, the Oxford pro-Lifers I spoke to were absolutely not the scare-mongering extremists of some popular perception, articulately arguing their case for the "tragedy" of abortion, and our nonchalant attitude towards it. In its status as a registered charity Life is not allowed to campaign to change the law, although this is done by other like-minded organisations. Devotees of the kind of radical mentality of Paul Hill, the American killer of an abortion doctor, are not to be found here.
The directionality is more insidious than that. The Oxford branch of Life is simply a counselling service, which also provides valuable practical help including accomodation for women who want to keep their child. However the ideological agenda can be pushed strongly. Saro McKenna, a PPE-ist at Trinity, rang the Oxford life counselling line, claiming to be pregnant and considering an abortion, because she did have the means to bring up a child and complete her degree. She said of the experience "they were sympathetic, but they played down all the difficulties of having a child while on your own and still studying. As soon as I said I would have to drop out, she told me 'Well, now you have made the mental leap, where are you going to live?' When Saro rang the accommodation Life recommended, she was told it was full. Another student who rang the Life helpline in a similar situation, with little money and the father absent found that the counsellor stressed the price of abortion without mentioning the financial burden of having a child, while claiming that having a child would be "something for you to love".
The literature and slogans of Life employ stronger shock tactics. At Freshers Fair, the University pro-lifers were prevented from circulating such leaflets and displaying life-sized models of the development of a baby to strengthen their impact. The Life website states "LIFE knows that abortion 'solves' nothing", "abuses women" and "often does such damage to the health of women that they are worse off than ever". In every case, there is just one answer. On the repercussions of pregnancy by rape, for example, a Life pamphlet implores that "the choice for childbirth is a choice to bring something good out of what is horrible and evil. It is a choice that won't harm her as much as abortion, and will allow her to remember her generosity, courage and strength rather than the humiliation and violence of rape followed by abortion."
On a national campaigning level, it is not just indignation at our rising abortion rates, which redounds on Life, although this is of course, a crucial concern. Recent Life conferences have featured talks on surrogacy, cloning and organ transfers. But the organisation is soon to be beset by the latest moral debate currently taxing the minds of doctors, policy-makers and human rights lawyers - the legalisation of euthanasia, in which it seems we are but footsteps away. The House of Lords in June agreed to give the Mental Incapacity Bill a second reading. Lord Joffe, the peer championing the legislation claiming that "We have laws in place which are clearly out of tune with the views of the majority of the population." With Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands already open to voluntary death, the latter seeing one in five of its citizens die from euthanasia, and living wills now possible, a changing climate in Britain in our approach to the right to die, for better or worse may only be a matter of time.
This strong advocacy of choice is evidenced in the strength of student opposition to Life. Underwood commented that people at the Council meeting were much more informed in their opposition than on previous occasions. Future pro-choice legislation on the Oxford or the national level will undoubtedly be surrounded by impassioned campaigns on both sides. Like the enduring memory of their images, this doesn't look the end of pro-Life as we know it.
30th Oct 2003