'Women's Rights': For Some, But Not For Others...

I talked with a woman who attends the Soup Run last night. Somehow we came to discuss social services, abortion and pregnancy.

She related to me that recently she had thought that she was pregnant. She lives in one of the many homeless hostels in Brighton.

Before taking a pregnancy test at the doctor's surgery, a test which came back negative, her GP laid out her 'options'. Abortion was suggested to her, not something she enquired about, were the test to be positive.

Having replied to the doctor that if the test were positive that she would want to keep the baby, the doctor warned her that, because she is 'drink dependent', that social services would soon step in to remove the new baby and take him or her into care. This is all before the test result was even in. So, before she has even been informed whether she is pregnant or not, her GP was basically encouraging her to abort the child, on the grounds that the child will be 'drink dependent' from birth, but by the same token, advised that were she to give birth that the child would be removed and taken into care (to be put up for sale, sorry, adoption, we can presume) on the grounds that the child would be 'drink dependent' from birth. Does that make any sense?

Not really, but then the eugenic mindset of so many working in the field of healthcare does not make much sense. Why would it? Eugenics is not science but a pseudo-science. The logic of the medical profession is rarely challenged nowadays, but it should be. For a start, the women's liberation movement proclaimed to be a new era of 'women's rights' and 'equality of treatment'. It also promised 'reproductive freedom' for women. Yet, this 'reproductive freedom' should really be re-examined and, if necessary, re-named, since 'reproductive freedom' seems either to indicate the freedom to access abortion - a negative freedom - to 'terminate' pregnancy, or, on the other hand, if truly this term reflects some kind of reality, then it is a 'reproductive freedom' granted to some and not to others. We can safely assume that if this woman was not poor or 'drink dependent', then the counselling given by her GP would be different. That's what status in society grants you - respectful dialogue with those in authority or a position of power. This is a woman and yet, I have to ask, where are her 'reproductive freedoms' and more than that where are her 'woman's rights'. The answer is that they don't exist for her, or rather that, more generally, that they exist for some but not for others.

Secondly, I'm not wholly convinced by the idea that because a woman is drink-dependent that the baby will emerge at birth asking for a can of Skol Super. There may be a period in which a new born baby suffers some form of withdrawal symptoms, but I doubt that there is conclusive scientific evidence that says that every baby born to a mother with drink problems will be an alcoholic. Secondly, we can assume that the advice to abort is because the baby's life will end up just like that of his mothers and that the inference is that this is a life 'not worth living'. Oh, and I forget that she also told me that because she is drink dependent that the baby might have 'birth defects'. What evidence is there for that and why abort because the baby is imperfect? Thirdly, the argument from the GP falls down from his own suggestion that the baby will be removed from her because not only is she alcohol dependent, but this will be passed down to the baby. So, an alcohol dependent baby suddenly loses the genetic alcohol dependency because it is being raised by a middle class couple in Kettering, instead of parents or a mother who drinks in Brighton?

Already, a pattern emerges in which truth is sacrificed for an ideal, or an ideology which says that some women have rights, but others do not. Some women have 'reproductive freedoms', whereas others have the freedom to abort and have their children removed from them at birth by social services. They are even, as was the case for this woman, told by their doctors, who, let's remember, work for the State's National Health Service, that if they are pregnant, it is either a suggestion to abort or the warning that social services will step in and take your baby away. Can you imagine how degrading, insulting and downright terrible that must feel?

This is the cruel injustice and judgment that the poor face in Brighton and in every town in the United Kingdom and it is not only levelled at those who drink or are drug dependent. The eugenic movement that led to the Holocaust and the destruction of countless human lives in Nazi Germany never went away and sheepishly abandoned their causes. They just moved into new areas in which their evil ideology could be made acceptable and palatable. They went into social services divisions, psychiatry, medicine, genetics, the abortion industry and anywhere that they could make an impact on society in accordance with their pseudo-scientific view of humanity.

Ann Furedi, head of BPAS is another example. Prior to her time as head of the BPAS, Ann led the Birth Control Trust, the 'charitable arm' of the Galton Institute (formerly known as the British Eugenics Society). The stated aim of the Birth Control Trust remains to 'spread supports practical initiatives in birth control, especially programmes to increase access to women's health care services in developing countries.' Consistently, Ann Furedi proclaims abortion as a women's rights issue. But what, Ann, if a woman has fallen on hard times, is pregnant and does not want her child to be aborted and does not want to give the child up for adoption. Where are her rights, as a woman, then? We are not naive, however. We know that these are not the kinds of 'women's rights' issues that concern one like Ann Furedi.