Diversity of views on abortion implies media hegemony may be weakening

Although columnists and editorial policy have generally argued on the side of choice in the abortion debate, it is impossible to say, without counting column inches, examining headlines using specific criteria and sifting through radio and television interviews, if the media coverage of the C case has been biased in one direction or the other.

What is striking, however, is the assumption of some journalists that those who express pro-life sentiments, either as independent persons or as members of a campaigning organisation, are monolithic in their approach to abortion or to any other contentious matter. Thus the pro-life movement is cast in terms of the worst excesses of one wing of that campaign in Ireland, namely Youth Defence.

There can be no comparison between the hectoring and emotional style of Youth Defence and the measured philosophical arguments advanced by people such as William Binchy, Breda O'Brien or David Quinn.

Another ploy which follows from this monolithic assumption is that the views of such people on other matters, ranging from stay-at-home mothers to the euro, are also predictable and fall within given parameters.

However, in more reflective times there are signs that the media hegemony on abortion, at least on the surface, is breaking down. The representation of the pro-life position on radio and television debates in recent months has been very potent and diverse, although the same cannot be said for chat shows.

Moreover, some journalists with strong pro-life credentials are columnists in respected newspapers, although their position may differ from editorial policy.

The greatest cause for concern in the media's handling of the abortion debate generally has been the peddling of the compassion argument on behalf of the pro-choice side whilst the pro-life argument is credited with deriving essentially from harsh dogma.

The promiscuous use of the term "religious fundamentalist" by columnists to describe all those who question the wisdom of abortion is a commonly-applied tactic even though the pro-life position is represented by a range of people from the God-fearing to the God-indifferent.

Choice has been elevated to the godhead of compassion, irrespective of what that choice is. Choice, it is argued, is morally neutral, like choosing to cut one's toe-nails.

Few journalists have considered that choice may not equate with compassion and that compassion may not best be served by abortion. The emotional consequences of choice in relation to abortion underpin the fallacy of the compassion position.

For example, abortion is associated with a 10 per cent risk of depressive disorder - this figure derives not from studies of Irish women, of which there have been none, but from European and American investigations.

This is a prevalence similar to that of post-natal depression, yet it has never been thought worthy of a documentary by RTE. The occurrence of depressive illness during pregnancy, especially in the first trimester, is not uncommon. In 1984 a British psychiatrist and in 1993 a Japanese psychiatrist found a link with prior abortion.

This "reactivated mourning", as it has been dubbed, is believed to be a reactivation of the unresolved grief that the mother experienced, or indeed suppressed, following the operation.

The link between deliberate self-harm and abortion has also recently been demonstrated and at times results in severe and lasting damage. A patient who was suicidal and being treated as an in-patient after an abortion once asked me, "Why did they never tell me it would be like this?"

Why indeed! Compassion is the preserve of only one side in this debate - to point to significant emotional problems following abortion is to run the risk of being accused of scaremongering, although these findings are published in peer-reviewed prestigious journals.

Abortion is not, for those who suffer these problems, the compassionate solution but the solution which condemns them to torment. Why has the suffering of such women been ignored by those who should have an interest in exposing it?

Has their trauma been colonised by those who would seek to deny it - a sentiment expressed in Swim- ming Against the Tide: feminist dis- sent on the issue of abortion, edited by Angela Kennedy and published recently by Open Air Press in Dublin?

Interestingly, the only medical aspect of abortion which has received any media attention is the finding that the foetus can experience pain. The ugh! factor has always been exploited in the abortion debate - the pictures of aborted foetuses which festoon our lampposts have rightly drawn the ire of many.

The appeal to emotion and aesthetics is not just the preserve of elements of the pro-life movement. The classic picture of the uterus with the knitting needle was used to great effect to soften public opinion in the United States prior to the Roe v Wade decision.

So the knowledge that the foetus can feel pain provokes expressions of concern and the understandable wish not to inflict suffering. Both, however, are hypocritical, since the proffered solution has been to anaesthetise the foetus during the procedure.

The morality of an act is determined by the act itself and not by the manner of its delivery - thus capital punishment is always morally wrong whether carried out by lethal injection or by beheading. The speed and cleanliness merely serve to facilitate our denial of the gravity of legislated killing.

A Sunday newspaper recently visited an abortion clinic in Liverpool and also the nearby guest-house which accommodated the unfortunate women. The headline referred to the compassion and concern exuded by both institutions.

The clinic was, of course, a private one and some 60 per cent of abortions in Britain are now carried out in the private sector. Yet the media have rarely explored the monetary aspects of abortion.

There is an abortion industry which trades on the suffering and distress of women and recent expansions incorporate lunchtime clinics with the stated objective of wishing to destigmatise abortion totally. All abortion facilities claim to offer pre-abortion counselling yet no attempt has been made to explore, either with the counsellors themselves or with the women clients, what happens during such a session.

Counselling is a specific technique which has unfortunately been broadened to encompass all two-way interchanges involving being nice and courteous. A patient who unfortunately was the client in one such session was asked if she wanted the abortion - when she said yes she was sent to have some pre-operative blood taken.

Apart from being told that there would be some post-operative bleeding, no other alternatives to the abortion were put to her nor was any possible ambivalence about the procedure on her part explored. She only learned of the possible emotional complications weeks later, when she attended a psychiatric outpatient clinic with a depressive illness.

There are signs that the media are coming to accept that there is a valid pro-life argument in the abortion debate. Perhaps journalists will have the courage to be truly investigative and examine in worthy fashion these grave issues rather than offering emotional knee-jerk responses to complex problems.

Our women, crossing the Irish Sea, and children, as yet unborn, deserve no less.

Patricia Casey is professor of psychiatry at the Mater Hospital/UCD