Study ignores the moral gravity of abortion

Both common sense and folk wisdom tell us that it is better to think before acting. Look before you leap. Act in haste, repent at leisure. When it comes to abortion, the 2018 legislation that authorised the procedure for any reason up to 12 weeks’ gestation contains one small gesture in this regard: a mandatory three-day waiting period. Three days too many, according to a report published this week: the Unplanned Pregnancy and Abortion Care (UnPAC) study.

Commissioned by the HSE, the recommendations of the study are unsurprising. Despite the fact that the abortion rate has more than doubled since 2018, what we need, apparently, is more abortion and more easily accessible abortion.

Of the 58 “study participants”, only three were self-referred. The others were “recruited” predominantly through abortion-providing GPs, hospitals, and women’s health clinics.

The transcripts of interviews with individual women – none of whom regrets her abortion – are harrowing. But not, I think, in a way that is intended by the authors. Descriptions of heavy bleeding and disposal of what is referred to as “pregnancy tissue” are chilling. There are accounts of women’s experiences of third trimester abortions for cases where there is a likelihood the baby, if allowed to be born, would die shortly after birth. And there are calls for late-term abortion to be extended to cases of life-limiting conditions (rather than life-ending conditions) – that is to say, to babies who, if born, would suffer from a handicap.

They say ‘Dublin 1 is for the far-right’ and threaten to kill a politician, yet Ireland ignores the threat

---

Unregulated student digs: A home away from home or an isolating experience?

---

Rise in school absenteeism: ‘Some stay up too late on their phones until 3 or 4am’

---

Sarah Moss: As a bike-riding vegetarian feminist I can see why people might disagree with everything I think

---

In response to questions by the interviewers, one woman described her feelings of anger – anger at the three-day waiting period, anger at the law, anger at men. Others complained about doctors who did not provide the “service” they wished for, and judged them for their real – or perceived – opposition to abortion.

Although the report states that “people portrayed themselves as careful, not careless, decision-makers” and that abortion was considered as not being “a decision you take lightly”, what is conspicuously absent from the report is any recognition of the moral gravity of the issue.

In the recent US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs, the court expressly declined to determine the moral question presented by abortion. However, it noted that even earlier decisions upholding abortion rights had acknowledged that abortion is “a unique act”, which “destroys what Roe termed ‘potential life’ and what the law challenged in this case calls an ‘unborn human being’”.

There is no escaping the moral component, but the authors of the study do their level best. They repeatedly use the phrase “the data indicates” to justify their conclusions, as though this were a purely empirical matter. So, for example, they say that the data “all points to the need for particular attention to cultivating normalisation of abortion”. That the normalisation of abortion is a good thing is simply taken for granted.

Personal autonomy

Needless to say, the “data” demand the end of the three-day waiting period too. Even so minor an inconvenience as the requirement to wait 72 hours before ending a life is regarded as “counter-productive to provision of a quality, user-centred service, by limiting access to timely care”. As one respondent put it: “It’s still taking that control away a bit isn’t it, like, ‘Oh we’re going to give you the service, but you still have to wait three days,’ you know for f***’s sake, it’s my choice…”

The three-day waiting period is a – very inadequate – recognition of the moral gravity of the decision that is under consideration. It requires a woman contemplating an abortion at the very least to draw breath and reflect on what she is about to do before she does it. The responses given by some of the interviewees in the report and their presentation by the study’s authors suggest that neither felt that there was any moral issue to be considered. So powerful is the rhetoric of personal autonomy that even the most trivial restraint is treated by both interviewers and interviewees as a scandalous deprivation of liberty.

There is simply no consideration whatsoever of the possibility that there might be any sort of countervailing interest. Yet there is, even on the twisted logic of the 2018 legislation. If there were no such opposing interest, why should abortion on demand be restricted to the first 12 weeks of the pregnancy? Why indeed? This points to the ultimate objective: to chip away at whatever little remaining legal recognition there is of justification for limiting or restricting abortion at all. The intention is to create a culture in which, through euphemism and the elevation of rights to personal autonomy over all personal responsibility, the moral component of abortion is concealed.

According to the HSE, there were 8,057 initial consultations in 2020, but only 6,577 abortions took place, suggesting that 1,480 women changed their minds. The three-day waiting period is a reminder to all involved of the nature of the decision to abort: life-altering for one, life-ending for the other. It is a reminder that our actions have consequences. It is a reminder that abortion cannot be undone, it is final. It is a recognition of what is lost when a life is ended. A culture of life, which valued both women and children, would suggest a somewhat longer waiting period, of approximately nine months.