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Jasper Gerard: A blurring of the abortion battle lines

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For the first time since the Rolling Stones were young and hip (so we are talking, like, pre-history here, kids) the public mood could be slowly turning against abortion.

On Tuesday a television documentary will show, in full horror, an abortion. Meanwhile, Joanna Jepson, the rather cute curate, appears to have won her campaign for a police investigation into doctors who undertook a late abortion on a baby with a cleft palate.

Those of us of broadly liberal opinion find ourselves painfully torn: we do not wish to fall into the cold, churchy dogma, lampooned by Monty Python, that “every sperm is sacred”. Equally, we do ascribe a moral value to a foetus and are troubled by circumstantial evidence that some doctors seem to sanction abortions with all the solemnity of a comis chef tossing an artichoke into the Magimix .

It is technology, for so long seen as the enemy by Christian fundamentalists, that is helping change attitudes. If you think there has been an outcry about baby seal clubbing, just wait till the viewing public sees a highly developed foetus destroyed. The technical arguments might be lost but the image of a foetus — particularly one well formed — is mighty powerful: “Who could kill that?” viewers will lament. “It looks so human. So like us.”

But these are strange times with both sides sounding contradictory. Liberals, who should defend free expression, use tortuous logic to oppose the screening. Conservatives, who should judge every foetus sacred, are suddenly happy to show the television foetus in the hope we will be so revolted as to oppose abortion.

Extreme anti-abortion campaigners in America have given their cause a bad name. They even oppose abortion when a mother’s life might be endangered by giving birth, or when she has been raped, or when she is under age: it is loving humanity but hating humans.

With support for the church plummeting to new depths, it is unlikely there will ever be pressure in Britain to oppose all abortion. But the glib feminist refrain “it’s a woman’s right to choose” has had a free ride for too long. There seems to be a culture where getting an abortion is just another side of our supermarket culture, where girls pop in for a pack of Marlboro Lights and a termination. We would not want doctors to spout theology but why don’t they first discuss the ethical issues with women, and the feckless men who abandon them at the first sign of a bump?

If the law is ever to be revised, antis need a more likeable spokesman. Many display the warm understanding of the Rev Ian Paisley. Jepson would be perfect but she might need to lose the dog collar: the British like their debates rational, not religious.

In 2001 there were 186,000 abortions in Britain. We are assured 88% were before 12 weeks. But that means 22,000 were after 12 weeks. When cuddly old David Steel led the charge for legalised abortion, surely he never envisaged such carnage. The permissive society was meant to be life enhancing. Broadly, I still support it. But as my wife prepares to give birth, just thinking of an abortion makes me shudder.

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