Wanted Children

Isn't it cruel to bring unwanted children into the world, people ask? Ideally, of course it is logical that every child should be wanted. But wantedness as a criterion for whether a person should be allowed to live or not is a frightening concept, as the logical converse conclusion is that it is justifiable to eliminate the unwanted—be they unwanted wives, husbands, elderly dependent relations, coloured people etc.

Even if a mother does not plan her pregnancy and at the time of birth is unable or unwilling to keep the child, can it automatically be assumed that this child has no future and would be better off dead? The growing waiting lists for adoption make a mockery of this suggestion. There is also little substance in the argument that unwanted pregnancies are more likely to end up becoming battered children than planned pregnancies. In a survey conducted by Professor Edward Lenoski in Southern California, 90% of battered children were found to be planned pregnancies.

I could spend much time in refuting the various arguments put forward in favour of abortion but I would like to turn instead to my earlier statment that instead of destroying life, we should destroy the conditions which make life intolerable.

So how do we go about "stitching up the wound"? I do not claim to have the blue-print of a perfect new society, where no-one would consider abortion as a necessity; I do believe that we must fight injustice: we must fight the patriarchy, we must fight exploitation of the poor, we must fight racial prejudice and all forms of intolerance and oppression. But in so doing we must not include the unborn in the ranks of the enemy—by destroying life we are achieving nothing in the struggle for a more humane society.