Why Is It Controversial To Speak Up For The Unborn?

There have been a lot of untimely deaths of late. First, the news earlier this month that a 31-year-old ex-Premier League footballer, George Baldock, had been found dead in his pool in Greece. “He was taken from us far too early,” the ITV commentator on the subsequent match between Greece and England told us. Which, of course, is a sentiment few would argue with.

And then last week, two more souls were taken from this world far earlier than most would believe fair: another 31-year-old in former One Direction star Liam Payne, who tumbled from the balcony of his hotel in Buenos Aires, and even more tragically, the baby son of Bristol City manager Liam Manning.

Tributes to all three have poured in, as one would expect.

Indeed, paying our respects to those who have departed this world seems to be one of the few things we do really well as a society. These days, it seems a tribute is paid almost every day to a public figure who has passed on, and perhaps more than any other shared experience, you can almost guarantee such tributes will be respected by every member of the Great British public. Because for all our ills, it seems we're actually quite good at honoring the dead.

And yet, on every such occasion - and especially when the departed is someone perceived to have been taken “too early”, I find myself wondering why such a sentiment is not shared when it comes to lives yet to begin their journey in this world.

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Few topics divide opinions so starkly as the pro-life/pro-choice debate, of course, with supporters on either side seemingly unable to find any common ground. Those on the pro-choice side speak of a woman's right to be able to choose what she does with her own body, and as a man I don’t feel at all well equipped to speak about women’s rights, but is it really fair to categorize abortion as an only-women’s-rights issue? Surely there's another life that needs at least to be part of the conversation? Isn’t that why much of the debate relates to at what point life begins? 

As someone who has never previously nailed my colors to either mast in this debate, I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the prospect of abortion being offered without a second thought. I’m sure most people can understand the argument for abortion in the case of rape or when the mother's life is in danger, but as an inviolable women’s right?

I've also never really understood why the debate is so hostile, and why defending the life of an unborn child is somehow seen as an extreme right-wing position.  I'm not sure when pro-choice became the mainstream viewpoint, as it most certainly appears to be today, but it seems to me to contradict a society that is in many other ways so willing to celebrate the weak and speak out for the vulnerable. 

Why are unborn babies different? And why is it controversial or even extreme to suggest that they shouldn’t be?

A number of my friends have recently had babies prematurely. I can't help but feel uncomfortable about the idea that some would advocate for the rights of mothers to abort babies even at a stage when they would likely be able to survive outside of the womb. 

Another friend of mine recently gave birth to a child with a previously undetected rare genetic defect, and again I found myself wondering whether, had the defect been detected, he and his partner would have been offered and perhaps even encouraged to have aborted the baby. The mother's life was at one stage at risk during the delivery, and I could therefore completely understand the argument for an abortion to be offered in such a case. Still, now the child has been allowed to enter the world, the father tells me his son seems entirely normal and that without the diagnosis they wouldn't have known anything was amiss. A lucky escape, then?

Other friends have had babies with Down’s syndrome, including one - the wonderful musician and comedian Chris Reid - who recently released a song about not being able to understand why everyone else - including medics - seemed so determined to tell him that there was something wrong with his child when to him he was “perfect”.

How is it that we can be so willing to defend the weak and the vulnerable in almost all cases, but not in the case of the unborn, or of children born with rare genetic differences?

My opinion on this isn't fully formed, having not previously engaged with the issue, but something about it just doesn't feel right, at least not to me, nor does it seem to fit with a culture that so heartily honors those on the other side of their time on this earth.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.