Pregnant silence

Brian Sewell once wrote an article about abortion headlined: ‘Women, the killers in our midst.’ He got an awful lot of flak for it, which he took in his stride. He came to mind during the screening of Abortion On Trial, the documentary hosted by Anne Robinson and screened this week to mark the 50th anniversary of the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act. In it, one of the participants described abortion as murder. ‘Are nine of us here… murderers?’ asked Mrs Robinson with a flourish, to which the only tactful answer was no, of course not. Brian would unhesitatingly have said yes.

Abortion is one of those issues about which dissent is not normally socially permissible right now; see what happened to Jacob Rees-Mogg. You can say it’s a difficult decision but you must, to avoid online lynching, say it is the woman’s right to choose and that the shame and stigma associated with abortion are incongruous, a result of women not sharing their abortion experiences.