In my last post I indicated that there were two (hopefully final) issues I wished to address as part of this ongoing debate, one of which – the problem with certain strands of feminist argument – I tackled head on, seemingly in a slightly controversial manner.

The second issue, and one I considerably more importance, was that of why women actually choose to have abortions and, just as pointedly, why we appear know so little, in terms of published evidence, about the answer to this particular question, one which I would consider to be absolutely pivotal to any debate on this issue.

There has, so far I’ve been able to ascertain, been no detailed, published research conducted in the UK, into why women choose to have abortions, in the forty years since the Abortion Act 1967 passed in law – and I that statement does our social research community any disservice that then I’d be absolutely delighted both to issue a correction and to see copies of the report(s) that prove me wrong.

Why this should be the case is, I strongly suspect, a function of the framing of the 1967 Act and particularly its adoption of a medico-legal system of defining the acceptable grounds on which an abortion can be carried out – of the 193,737 abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2006, 187,740 were carried out on the grounds that ‘the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman’ and a further 2,753 on the grounds that ‘the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of any existing child(ren) of the family of the pregnant woman’ these being the medico-legal ‘catch all’ categories under which elective abortions sought on primarily ’social’ grounds are necessarily categorised in order to comply with the current law.

If we’re all completely honest here then I think we all know that were the state to require anything approximating solid evidence that a woman seeking an elective abortion really is at genuine and verifiable risk of injury to their mental and/or physical health then in the vast majority of cases the available evidence would not support such a contention – where those of us who support women’s right to choice differ markedly from opponents of abortion is in our view that any social reasons that may come to bear on and influence a woman in making such a choice are no less valid a basis for supporting them in that choice then any of these medico-legal artifices concocted by parliamentarians back in the 1960’s.

The world has moved on, and a solid majority of people in this country support women’s right of access to legal abortion services in the full knowledge that the vast majority of abortions are carried out for social reasons, for all that those opposed to abortion try to characterise this as ‘abortion-on-demand’ and suggest that this is somehow a ‘bad thing’ in principle, even though we all know that that is what actually goes on in practice and that the knowledge that this is the real situation in no way adversely effects the level of public support for legal abortion services.

That being the case, if the majority of us are content to permit parliamentarians to frame the law in terms of this kind of medico-legal cop out in the full knowledge that it bears little or no relation to the actuality of abortion choices, the social components of which we’re all reconciled to anyway, then why should it matter that the law gets in the way of, if not actively prevents, research that would give us a much understanding of why women choose to have abortions?

There are, I think, three main reasons:

1) Research of this kind would go a considerable way toward dispelling many of the common myths and misconceptions promulgated by opponents of abortion in the efforts to impose draconian restriction on access to abortion services. It would counter the idea that women who find themselves facing the choice of whether to have an abortion or not are somehow ‘feckless’ or ‘irresponsible’ or simply using abortion as a means of contraception. Opponents of abortion have a clear vested interest in keeping such information out of the public domain because it undermines many of their core arguments, not least of which those which almost regard pregnancy as a form of punishment visited on women who, in their opinion, follow a dissolute, promiscuous and immoral lifestyle.

In fact, even within the current debate on abortion, the so-called ‘pro-life’ lobby has form for seeking to exclude important social research from the public and political domain – in her laughable ‘minority report’ on the report of the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee on medical developments in abortion since the 1967 Abortion Act, Nadine Dorries (yes, I know this is getting repetative) argued that this piece of research into the reasons why some women ‘present late’ for abortions, i.e. close to the existing upper time limit’ should be excluded from the deliberations of the committee and its final report.

Why should she try to do this? Well, her stated reason was because the research has not been ‘peer-reviewed’ and published in a journal – even though its freely available from the University of Southampton’s website and open for critical evaluation. However I suspect the real reason she wanted it struck out the committee’s report has rather more to do with its containing observations like this one:

The findings indicate that while it is important to keep improving the early abortion service, changes in this area will have a limited effect for the incidence of second-trimester abortion, simply because many women who terminate pregnancies in the second trimester do not realise they are pregnant until they are more than 13 weeks pregnant

That’s a bit of scary thought, huh?

2) Understanding why women choose to have abortions, and what influences them in their decisions, may be of considerable assistance in reducing some of the social stigma that is still commonly, and unfairly, attached to such choices.

To my mind one of most inhumane arguments deployed by amateur moralist who oppose abortion is the suggestion that the number of abortions can somehow be controlled or restricted by stigmatising women who find themselves in the unfortunate position of facing up to such difficult and painful decisions – and what make this even an more reprehensible idea that it was, previous, are the efforts of the so-called ‘pro-life’ lobby to use evidence of increases rates of depression and other mental health problems in women who have had abortions in the past as a ‘justification’ for restricting acces to abortion services rather than as an argument for improving post-abortion support and counselling services.

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy – you talk about women like they’re pieces of shit for making the crushingly difficult decision to have an abortion and then when they depressed afterwards you claim that that’s grounds for restricting access to abortion services and all the while you kid yourself about your own moral superiority…

(I’ll leave it there as I did promise not to go into swearblogging mode over here and find impossible to comment further without recourse to some serious creative use of invective).

3) An understanding of why women have abortions is, or should be, a essential component of formulating public policy in this an any number of other arenas.

Let’s get one thing straight, those of us who do support women’s rights to legal access to abortion services are no less assiduous in our desire to see fewer abortions carried out in the UK than anyone who professes themselves to be ‘pro-life’. Where we differ from so-called ‘pro-lifers’ is that we’re not stupid enough to think that the practice of abortion can be simply moralised out of existence or that restricting access to abortion is somehow ‘consequence free’.

There are two valid methods of reducing the number of abortions which take place in the UK each year.

One is by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, which requires, amongst other things, an investment in high quality sex/relationships education and free and readily available access to contraception.

The second method is by addressing the question of why women have abortions and, specifically, those situations in which the circumstances some women find themselves in, when pregnant, force the issue on them. Not all women who ship up at abortion clinics necessarily want to have an abortion – in some cases the decision is effectively a ‘forced move’, one taken reluctantly because they look at the personal situation and feel that they have no other acceptable choice open to them, as much as they might actually want to continue with the pregnancy where their circumstances any different.

At the present time, the right of choice is essential precisely because some women feel that they have no choice, because to continue with a pregnancy would tip them, and their family, over the line in the extremes of poverty to a degree that they feel would be unsustainable both for themselves and for other family members, particular their other children.

Does thought horrify you?

The idea that, at the start of the 21st century, there may be women – if not in Britain then certainly in other developed countries, who choose to have an abortion because to bring another child into their family would put in an impossible position, one in which they could not adequately provide for the needs of the existing children?

Well if it doesn’t, it should because while we cannot be sure if, or to what extent, this may be happening the UK because of the lack of substantive research into such questions, we do know it happening elsewhere in Western society, in fact its happening in the wealthiest nation in the world, the United States of America.

I’ve mentioned previously that although there seems to be little or no available research in this area originating from the UK this is not necessarily the case in some other comparable countries – hence I did manage to track down this paper, entitled ‘Reasons why US women have abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives‘ (pdf – 258k) which does provide some extremely useful insight in the various factors which do influence women in their decision to have an abortion.

I’m going to pick over the detail of the report here in part because you can all read but also because its content (and value) is very nicely summarised by its opening abstract from which I’ll simply reproduce what the study has to say be way of it results and the primary conclusion its authors drew from their study.

RESULTS: The reasons most frequently cited were that having a child would interfere with a woman’s education, work or ability to care for dependants (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%). Nearly four in 10 women said they had completed their childbearing, and almost one-third were not ready to have a child.
Fewer than 1% said their parents’ or partners’ desire for them to have an abortion was the most important reason. Younger women often reported that they were unprepared for the transition to motherhood, while older women regularly cited their responsibility to dependants.

CONCLUSIONS:The decision to have an abortion is typically motivated by multiple, diverse and interrelated reasons.The themes of responsibility to others and resource limitations, such as financial constraints and lack of partner support, recurred throughout the study.

So, women who choose to have abortions are ‘irresponsible’ and ‘feckless’, are they? Not according to this research which clearly shows that regardless of the circumstances in which women fall pregnant, the factors that most influence them in making the difficult and painful choice as to whether or not to continue with a pregnancy of seek an abortion are anything but indicative of feckless and irresponsible behaviour. In fact, from reading that extract one could only reasonably conclude that the vast majority of women who do choose have abortions are ‘guided’ in their choice by a desire to make the most responsible choice possible in what are brutally difficult circumstances.

If there’s one other thing I’d like to draw your attention to then its this:

Nearly four in 10 women said they had completed their childbearing…

One thing the report clearly identified is that the number of women giving this as one of their reasons for having an abortion increased between 1987, when previous study was conducted, and 2004, the date of this study, from 28% to 38%, with number citing this as the most important reason for their decision rising, over the same period, from 8% to 19% and the quotation, from one of the study’s participants (a lower income, divorced woman) is particularly revealing in terms of the thought processes that accompany such decisions.

There is just no way I could be the wonderful parent to all three of them and still have enough left over to keep the house clean and make sure the bills are paid and I’m in bed on time so I can be at work on time. Its impossible.

30-year-old with two children, below the [Federal] poverty line

One last thing – a response to Cath’s comment, which I’ve just spotted:

At the risk of coming over completely rad fem on this issue, I don’t see how the debate can be served by seeking to find out why women have abortions. As a woman who has had an abortion, I’m pretty much done with feeling any need to justify myself , and I don’t think women should have to justify it. There is a danger in that approach of opening the door to moralistic judgements about women’s decisions, one that’s already highlighted in the first paragraph with the distinction being made between ‘clinical’ and ’social’ abortion. But I’ll wait and see what Unity comes up with before I say anymore, ‘cos he’s probably already got that covered…

Yes, Cath, I feel I do have this covered if only because I was ‘cheating’ a little when writing that last article in the sense that I knew, in advance, what the outcomes of the research I referred to are and the extent to which they act to counter the kind of ‘moralistic judgement’ you seem a little anxious about.

I can well appreciate that you neither feel the need to justify your own decision or that women should have to justify theirs, but would remind you both that not all women necessarily feel that way and that if we’re enter the realms of ‘justification’ then what matters is both that women can justify these decisions to themselves and they we fidn effective ways support those who find that a difficult and painful experience by ensuring that they have access to the best possible support post-abortion and by doing everything possible to remove the inhumane and perverse social stigma that opponents of abortion are so eager to attach to such decisions in pursuit of their own selfish objectives.

As a final ‘reason’ why I think ‘we’ – not me personally, I might add – should investigate the question of why women have abortions…

…well let me put it this way – its estimated that around 2 million women in the UK have had abortions over the last 40 years, women whose voices are noticeable in the current debate only by their almost complete absence – and all due credit to the Abortion Rights campaign for working to address that deficiency – and yet here we all are reading the best efforts of the 41 year old bloke to if not speak up on their behalf – which is not my main intention – then at least remind everyone that these voices, necessary and important voices, are largely absent from this debate and that if we should doing anything at all here then we should be trying to make sure that those voices are heard and that these women are given the platform, opportunity and support they need to be able to speak for themselves.

About the author
'Unity' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He also blogs at Ministry of Truth.
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