Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 5. March 30 1981
Horror Pictures to Deliberately Distort
Horror Pictures to Deliberately Distort
This imagined humanity of the foetus has to be deliberately concocted in our minds by anti-abortionists. They show pictures of six month old babies together with horror pictures of aborted foetuses in their publicity material, because they know that unless they do this, it would be difficult for us to really see the foetus as a human being in miniature. That is also why they always attribute human movements and emotions to what can only be considered as the normal physical movements of any animal embryo.
There is nothing abstract about the humanity of the pregnant woman, however, who wishes, in the interest of her own life to make the decision herself, as to whether or not to continue her pregnancy. We never hear anti-abortionists talk about women's needs - the main aim of all their attempts to 'help' pregnant women is to save the life of the 'unborn child' - in fact many of them deny these needs altogether by saying that foetal life must always take precedence over the woman's life whatever the consequences. The Pope said in 1973 that every pregnancy must be brought to term, even when it is known in advance that a birth will cost a woman her life.