THE FUTURE OF ABORTION RIGHTS

[Music] thank you [Music] my name is breach hair and I'm going to chair this discussion I've had a long time interest in the topic um as you know abortion is rarely out of the news and you might remember that abortion that was made legal in the states in 1973 referred to as Roe versus Wade but that constitutional right was removed this year and has caused a lot of controversy there and a lot of reaction and now Congress or individual states have to decide whether to set their own abortion laws and when asked people in Kansas recently voted for choice we obviously um we don't have it particularly easy here although the circumstances are very different and abortion has been legal here under certain circumstances since 1967. and recently telemedicine has made early medical abortion very um has been made permanent but protests continue outside abortion clinics and some places have needed to have buffered zones established so when it comes to abortion rights it seems that nothing can ever be taken for granted so for the next 90 minutes we're going to explore the future of abortion rights and I'll introduce you to your speakers in a minute but as you listen to them as you listen what they have to say consider whether you agree with them or whether you don't what you'd like to contribute are points that you'd like to make in response or even challenge them but until they're finished keep your thoughts to yourself once they've all had their say and then I'll invite you to have yours I'm going to give very brief introductions to the speakers you can read the biographies on the BET of ideas website and they will each speak for a maximum of five minutes so in order of speakers we have set conveniently in the way that they're going to speak so on my far left we have Margo Martin she's a student at aberrits with University that's in Wales and she together with Ella Whelan who is in maternity leave have produced this session next is Mary Kinney who Kenny who's sitting on my right which is just his proof what I've said they're not sitting in the order they're going to speak um Mary's a journalist a playwright an author and probably known to many of you her latest book which is on the on sale outside is called The Way We Were Catholic Ireland since 1922. so you can find her book on the books and the bookstore later after Mary will be darvler darvlin Murphy here on my left she's also a student and researcher and she's at the University of Kent and as well as abortion she's interested in reproductive Health generation free speech and gender and our last contributor will be Dr Pierce Ben he's a philosopher author and lecturer and he's a very regular contributor to the Battle of ideas and you may have seen him a few times already this weekend okay so five minutes max and let's start thank you it is can everyone hear me it's my con great uh thanks for the introduction Brit uh so I'm going to start by how I first reacted to the news that Rosen uh Rowan versus Wade fell and my first reaction was pulled and I wanted to um kind of I wanted to Express that abortion rights should be protected by the right to privacy and that should be a constitutional right I'm kind of wanting to Advocate that without a democratic process because that that's kind of I felt so strongly about it but after having read more about what's happening in the US the past few weeks and after having kind of actually sat down and thought about what my original opinion was I've kind of come to the conclusion that through a democratic process is the only way we can secure the abortion rights are protected um this is actually even in if as we see what's unfolding in America at the minute if we look at Arizona and Ohio who had trigger laws that banned abortional made abortionally restrictive um as soon as Roe v Wade fell um these trigger laws have now been blocked by um by legislation not permanently but it's kind of opening the floor to a more democratic process through referendum or through um through votes um in the in the each State's Congress in Kansas a deep red State voted as I thought using in my opinion the most democratic process a referendum by the population and they um voted to protect abortion rights in the most concerned one of the most conservative states in the U.S Montana went as far as to decide that um Bush nights I should be protected by Privacy Law by the rights of privacy something that I really wanted to advocate so through Democratic process in the US this has already happened we've seen in Argentina in 2020 abortion was legalized in Mexico 2021 in Ireland 2018. so the um Democratic process is the only way to ensure these rights um but what does the Democratic process represent what does it um why why are why is it so important and it represents to me and how I understand it the fundamentals of choice and through the through Choice which is the expression of our human ability to make really difficult decisions based on our own moral autonomy so that the vote or a Democratic process represents this incredibly important part of the human experience this is expressed I'm gonna refer to my own research on researching Spanish Literature at the minute um and in the book that I'm I'm mainly focusing on the characters are despicable and and difficult to even like parts of them what this does is gives the reader their own agency to decide kind of what how they react to the to the characters um decisions but it also shows and explicitly shows how throughout the narrative it's very obvious that the characters could have made different choices along the way along the in chapter one they could have done a completely different choice that would have made them better people or more likeable people so again in literature and art at this idea of choice and the fundamental part of democracy is expressed um this brings me to my uh main headline I'd like to call it um that I believe that policy should be based on the Democratic on on this Democratic fundamental um element of choice so this is because we cannot agree when life begins we cannot agree we cannot con to a consensus of when um we understand life to begin to some religious people life begins at conception to other people they don't view a personhood that they don't view people just has a person who had a personhood is only granted once it's part of um part of society which is after birth and because we cannot decide this because there is no consensus you have to base our policies in something that we all in a demo them in the Democratic societies can agree on which is choice um this is not difficult to come across in uh in different protests so in one minute thanks uh this is explicitly shown in different protests and a different um movements towards in Argentina's case in in their proberto movement which is their pro-choice movement the specific language was used um which was I want to uh women were using freedom and choice as a specific language so it's very explicit it's not something you have to dig for but for me what's something what's even more interesting in in in some cases a bit more um they hold more ground as conservative voices again and again are of voicing this this importance of of choice um in and Ohio the congressman John Curtis has expressed that women should be making this decision he as a man I don't agree with this line of thought but he says that he is a man should be making this Choice women should be what this shows is he's confronted by the implications of democratic rights he's he's facing up to social pressure to understand that in in democracy sorry democracy women should be making these choices um and my last point Sorry is that out of context of abortion discussions what's happening in Iran is um also shows this an Iranian wife of a revolutionary guard has expressed that um she doesn't believe that the morality laws should be upheld on the basis that she hopes that women make the right moral choices but this cannot be done unless it's done with freedom and freedom of choice so I'd like to finish with that there is hope thank you [Applause] I'm going to stand up so you can see me good afternoon Madam chairman ladies and gentlemen and I say ladies and gentlemen because I adhere to the scientific view that there are to Sexes and that sex is biological and then because I'm perhaps more suited to talk about the past of abortion rather than the future since I I first encountered this debate in 1966 when my local MP Lena Diego uh labor party uh Holborn gave a talk about um how uh there must be abortion law reform she emphasized at that time the class element of the rather patchy law which existed she said uh that a rich woman could go have an abortion because she wanted to go on a ski holiday but a poor woman couldn't have an abortion even if she lived in a hovel and she was more it's very interesting to look at how attitudes change over the years she was more emphasized really the inequality of that I think she's more disgusted of the idea of a woman going skiing and being so rich enough to go skiing but uh you know there was at that time at the time of you know leading up to a change in the abortion law make it more accessible because it was in a soldier penumbra um there was uh the claims that there were at up to 50 000 abortions a year may be taking place and I think it was Paul Ferris who wrote a book about that people said but that's absolutely shocking You couldn't possibly have 50 000 abortions a year that's an exaggeration surely put about by the pro-life Lobby no it wasn't actually that that was true and the uh prediction was that once the abortion law really came in properly and really and once it was good birth control uh that in fact this would drop but of course the most recent statistics are that there are 209 000 abortions every year so it's actually quadrupled since it became legal uh so the notion which I think Bill Clinton advanced in the 1990s that abortion should be safe legal and rare Perhaps it is indeed safe and legal for women but rare it isn't if we look at the statistics so uh it has absolutely the picture has changed over the years and um we must bear in mind that uh in the past uh some of the is really harrowing and scandalous stories about women having illegal abortions were placed in the context of very little birth control and he ever know who's a wonderful French writer actually she wrote a terrific book called live and more which has been turned into a movie about an abortion that she had in 1963 and and it it really is very very unsparing um but we must bear in mind that in 1963 France still had an anti-contraceception law actually a law which had been ushered in in 1920 because they were so panicked about the Fallen fertility after the first World War uh so we put that in that place um interestingly to Bridget macros biographer asserts the reason why she had three children and back in the 1960s was that you couldn't get the pill in France at that time and I think that was absolutely true they didn't change con the contraceptive laws in France until 1967. so that was the context of that past um times have changed and abortion moved from being something that was regarded by many people as uh regrettable but sometimes necessary inter at the notion of a right and a choice and it seems to me that when we get to 2022 uh really all the big guns are on the side of choice and on the side of abortion rights and we can see that uh really in the in the culture all around us um for example when uh Georgia Maloney came to be leader of Italy she said that she wanted to introduce a situation where women could have more children comfortably because Italy's fertility rate is absolutely catastrophic absolutely going through the floor like most in Europe um she was immediately reprimanded by the European Union and Elizabeth born the prime minister of France said the first priority we have is to guarantee abortion rights he would write to the fore about that and uh the EU European Union macron himself wants to bring the right to abortion he wants to make it a constitutional right which I think is always a mistake uh to make it a constitutional rather than look at it through normal legislation uh and for example uh in in the fraud situation in uh European the European Parliament has suggested that abortion should be refusal of abortion should be regarded as gender-based violence in the United States where indeed Margo referred to the complicated divisions those are there Cheryl Sandberg the boss of Facebook has just announced that she will give three million 3.5 million dollars to abortion rate right uh two abortion rights campaigns uh to uh uh uh in order to overturn uh the the situation that it is in India changes indeed perfectly free to do so as anybody else is free to Lobby on the other side I think that over the years of course I've seen many many cases of compelling stories many many tragic stories many empathetic stories and as I describe in my book how Ireland changed from being anti-abortion to accepting abortion rights really this came about through the telling of stories and through people being sorry for young women who had to travel and so on because there are many arguments indeed absolutely for abortion there's only one argument against abortion and that is this is a human life we know from conception from conception as science has told us as science has shown us over and over again that from conception we have a human life and we have to take that seriously if a man and a woman conceive of a human life together they must ask themselves do they have the responsibility to actually respect that human life and to allow it to live this is a serious moral question it of course there is autonomy and of course there is agency as we're always told but we even in the area of autonomy let us remember there is also the factor of nature simonda Beauvoir herself who was absolutely affirmative in favor of abortion rights nonetheless said as soon as a woman is pregnant she feels the power of nature within her she she actually described this rather disparagingly as make making woman a servant of this of the species but she says any woman who ever uh gets pregnant in any circumstance yields her autonomy because nature is there and incubating a new life so what I say is take it seriously respect the science of biology thank you thank you terrible um first of all I'd like to thank the Battle of ideas for inviting me to speak um I've attended this event now for several years both volunteering and just kind of coming to watch um I always think it's really challenging and hopefully this panel will be exactly the same um in trying to kind of note down some opening statements of what I want to say I've realized that um I was kind of doomed because there's so much within um the realm of abortion to discuss um that inevitably in five minutes you can't wrap everything up um so for sake of clarification I would like to First State the statement that I am in favor of the decriminalization of abortion and then hopefully that will then become elaborated on through interactions with all of you um so yeah for safe clarification um I am pro-do criminalization um I will also be referencing um women seeking abortions because it is generally women who are seeking abortions um and in addition to that um yeah I think that terminology clarification um as Mary said is very relevant and very important because once you detach um Womanhood from abortion I think that uh trivializes the discussion and removes it from its core which is women's rights um so yeah I'd like to kind of start by discussing a case that was recently brought um into the media when a woman with Down Syndrome Heidi um Crowder um brought a case the high court against saja Javid um on the grounds of discrimination on the grounds of disability and she argued that allowing um the abortion of a fetus with a diagnosis of a severe abnormality which encapsulates um Down syndrome as discriminatory and um I would like to make the probably quite controversial it's not controversial statement I think it is discriminatory but I think her solution to that problem was misplaced um I think that the the correct solution for uh the kind of quite arbitrary placements of um timings for allowed abortion and legal abortion and legal abortion is to make abortion available um at any time during a pregnancy for any reason I don't think abortion should be um gate kept either state or by medical professionals um so and I think it was a real shame that pro-choice campaigners went quite silent when that case was in the Press I thought it was a good opportunity to make the court make the argument for decriminalization by saying that yes the law is unequal let's make it legal not by reducing women's rights but by extending them further and rather than restricting women's choice and autonomy we should extend it and trust women more than we do currently um and I think that there was a fear of being controversial and making that statement due to the sensitive topics and the kind of very personal nature um of the discussion so I'd be interested in what the audience in the panel have to say about that um and I think you know the the discussion about buffer zones is also inevitably gonna come up I'm sure it already was a um raised in the early discussion that his chaired on religious freedom um and the right to protest outside abortion clinics and it's a it's a point that I really struggled to um reason with the you know the whole point in the Battle of ideas is to be Pro freedom of speech and pro freedom of expression but I do think that there comes a time and a a point and a place where um the right to protest um infringes on a woman's right to access medical care um and I I was reading just this morning that uh in really in Scotland um there's an anti-abortion charity that are um training up protesters to um kind of grab the attention of male partners of women seeking abortions as they wait outside clinics to go in and get the women to to stop receiving that Medical Care um and there's also uh been exposed that various anti-abortion Charities are encouraging the use of okay um reversal pills that seek to kind of intervene um in the process of an abortion which has been widely deemed by the medical profession as unsafe but kind of in wrapping up my opening statement I would like to make the point that I think it's really important that we're here today the the case for abortion clearly isn't completely made um the fact that we're here and disagreeing and agreeing shows that we need to engage with the moral Arguments for abortion I'd quickly really like to plug and forady's book which um is amazing and it's available at the book stand um but I think she makes the point really well that um we need to engage in tough discussions and that is what will make the pro-choice movement Stronger by avoiding discussions we only weaken our start um and I think that it's really important that we are here and so I'd like to thank you all for coming so yeah [Music] appears thank you very much uh Brad I know that some people maybe think maybe have noticed that I'm the only man on this panel and that uh some of you may be thinking that men have no right to talk on the issue I would say uh actually I'd say first of all how do you know I am a man but uh but even leaving that aside I think we're dealing here with a moral argument and I think we've now got past the stage when we're arguing about who has a right to speak uh and what's important is there are arguments and I want to present some all right so in their opening presentations um Margot talked about the importance of choice and Mary um said finally that the issue is that we're dealing with a human being here a living human being and there is no right to kill a living human being now no doubt Mary will reply to Margot when it comes to the point about choice we could say well yes but then laws exist to restrict people's choices when the choices they are making are wrong choices and so the whole issue we're discussing here is whether the choice to have an abortion is a morally wrong choice and the additional very complex issue about what the law should say about the wrong choices we make given that almost everybody in this room if not everybody accepts that there are certain morally wrong things that people do that should not be a matter for the police I mean uh in this Society if your spouse is Unfaithful that may be a bad thing to do but you don't call 999 and say I caught my wife flirting with somebody at a party uh the Conor Burns it was actually put well he's another matter but anyway this just make a simple Point law morality complex complex uh relationship however to get to the point though because I'm aware of the time constraints there is a very familiar moral argument against abortion it's comes out it's really underlies everything that's said it goes like this premise one it is always wrong to kill an innocent human being deliberately premise 2 abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being therefore abortion is always wrong now it's a perfectly valid argument by valid I don't mean the conclusion is true I mean that if the premises are true then the conclusion must be true now many people say well obviously it's not a sound argument it may be valid in the sense that the conclusion follows but it's obviously silly to say that abortions the deliberate killing of a human being when I beg to disagree it seems to me that whatever your position on abortion morally speaking there's something that all sides need to accept however uncomfortable it is um whatever the truth about it ethically abortion barring may be the very early stages of pregnancy when there might be some debate but abortion in the normal case is the deliberate killing of a human being that's what it is as a matter of description it is deliberate killing people don't like to say this because the word killing has connotations of wrongness and we don't think abortion's wrong therefore we don't want to think it's killing unpsychologically understandable but it's a fudge what we need to do is say Yes actually abortion is deliberate killing but what follows it's not obvious what follows because there are two very powerful arguments uh which are used to counter the logically valid arguments I began with and it is logically valid if the premises are true the conclusion is true and the two arguments are this first of all even though the human conceptus or fetus or whatever stage is that even though it is a living human being it is not a moral person that's to say just because you're a living human being doesn't mean you have all the rights that are normally due to the kind of human beings that we are in this room or I hope we are anyway and one I mean they're various accounts of why it might not be the case that the living human being is a person but some are associated with a number of bioethicists and moral philosophers and others who will say as the philosopher John Harry says to be a person I.E to be owed moral respect that extends to um respect for the right to life to be a person you have to be capable of valuing your own existence capable of valuing your own existence a fetus is yeah one minute a fetus isn't capable right all debatable more commonly though people tend to say well it's not really about the moral status of the conceptus it's more about the rights of the woman and this I think is even more compelling because what we've got here um you can see the structure of this we've got a genuinely difficult moral problem here because we have a clash of interests and of purported Rights for I have everything women who say um yes okay let's concede that we are dealing with a living human being here however it does not follow that in all circumstances this human being has a right to live off her body and that is what is at stake here the right of a woman not to permit an admittedly living human being to live off her body or at least not in all circumstances now here we have a round pass because the pro-life people and I have some sympathy with them I have to say some they'll say look um what you're doing is play it's not just allowing something to die you're deliberately killing it this must be really relevant when it comes to whether you have a moral right to detach the fetus from your body this is the real issue I don't know how to solve it which is why I'm slightly uncomfortable being on this panel but I do want to say look we have to have the moral debate we have to listen to each other without prejudice to listen charitably to understand whether that is coming from and then we can think more clearly about the law thank you very much [Applause] [Music] right Pierce has summed up very nicely what has been said on the panel and I hope in the spirit of which is invited that we'll have a very constructive discussion um so I just wanted to sort of like Zone in on this idea of the fetus being a human being like I will accept it being a human life it's human in biology and it is alive um but I don't think that with it being incapable of being separated from the mother it is its own human being um babies when they're born they can be well not ideal can be separated from the mother and can live without the mother but a fetus or a freshly conceived egg or whatever that isn't a human being and therefore I feel like that makes it more but it makes it it's hard to say that you're killing a human being when it's not yet a being on its own okay hi um so obviously there's a pro-choice that's the pro-life to clearly irreconcilable different moral position I don't take a position about it which one should be should be primary but the problem here is is that there's a third party involved here uh you're imposing on a medical practitioner to effectively to break his Hippocratic Oath as soon as the um fetus becomes I mean as soon as you've got fertilized over in the psycho that is separate to the woman's body and then eventually develops into something reasonably resembling a human being and if you're asking a medical professional to intervene there to kill it that is a problem and the other complication here of course is since all the abortion laws are brought in there's been massive changes in technology we now have uh we on a strip easily universally available effectively very very cheap means of assessing monsters even week by week uh what your fertility status is therefore it's arguable that no woman can invade the responsibility of knowing at least month to month what purpose was it gestational facility status is uh these need to be factored into a discussion and I think it does need to shift more under the um pro-life side than the pro-choice there has to be a balance there's no way you can easily get the perfect balance but it has to shift from what it is now uh thank you um yeah I found it's quite bizarre to sort of hear thank you so I find it quite bizarre to hear sort of you know argued on a public platform in the 21st century that we still don't know where life begins I mean if you look in any embryology textbook I mean it all says you know that's where fertilization is the point at which Life Begins whether you ascribe rights to that developing you know we've heard languages like you know conceptus Etc or or not you know there there really is no you know there really is no argument that that is the points you know that life does begin um and peers this point just with regards to I think you quoted um John Harris in terms of well yes it's alive but it hasn't sort of uh you know it can't it can't operate independently I don't think it's any coincidence that the likes of John Harris Michael Tooley Peter Singer um they make the same arguments in terms of um well yes if they haven't if they have if the if they're developing unborn baby has not um achieved some kind of right of Independence then it doesn't it doesn't have the status of a moral person and then quite consistently they make the arguments in terms of executero killing of newborn infants they do um as well as others um you know comatose patients as well um it's really no coincidence and it's not I don't think it's a particularly sort of helpful or um or beneficial extension uh thank you for a debate well I think we're going down to much further than it maybe should be well birth statement I am female born but I mean every time when I have sex I could potentially be pregnant now I use contraception but no contraception is 100 because I use contraception I don't test myself every time when I have sex next day now what is the question here as a female I do not have sex unless I want to get pregnant is that what you hope me to do or because I want to have sex well so sign up being pregnant well and now one day when I have sex and days later I find out that regardless of contraception but they use I become pregnant and now what tough Your Vessel now get on my life um how about is my body that's me I I I have no vessel my body as long as it's in my body my neighbors my lungs everything else it's mine and once you take it if that's also important if you can take it out of me without killing me so bad have it but as long as it's in me it's my decision and it's about not as simple and I'm making that decision for me regarding my body in sound mind if that is a questionable you have to prove that I'm not in sound mind uh isabat is not as simple as that and anybody else can make decision for them regarding their body and I'm making decisions for me regarding my body thank you thank you um I just wanted to take issue with Pierce um very logical argument at the beginning but the premises that you rested on use the word killing of a human life and you said that we should use that language because it's very emotive but actually there are plenty of situations where we do choose to withdraw life because we stop supporting it when people are taking off life support or whatever so I would say that's a fairer equation that's more equal than it is to talk about killing it which sounds like a very active thing rather than a withdrawal of support yeah can I just say first of all Anne Fury is indeed excellent book the moral case for abortion is a very uh astonishing book because it is very honest and she uses that phrase in the book she says it will involve a killing and I think that is a very honest thing for her to confront even though she Advocates completely the woman's choice in every situation on the question of choice I mean I think that it's in reality it's often much more nuanced than it can be in debate for example in Janice Turner in the times wrote a little while ago that 20 of terminations she's completely pro-choice by the way which take place in Great Britain uh are actually happen because the the the the woman or the couple have no proper support they have no child care for example they cannot see how they can actually continue their family life without Child Care uh and numerous abortions undoubtedly take place because of the lack of Housing and accommodation I mean this is a a very acute problem in this country and also as I I know in my native Ireland it's it's an absolutely appalling problem that young couples can't actually start families because they are because of of the lack of accommodation so there is there are Choice often in real life it involves it often involves a very wide spectrum of complicated uh life situations now I think it was um devil who mentioned the question of men outside abortion clinics I I don't wouldn't at all feel comfortable about uh joining any sort of protest outside an abortion clinic but I I have met people who say they have rescued women in the sense of offered them an alternative by being there by bearing witness so that does need more discussion but I think it's interesting about men because quite again I think it's Elizabeth Draper in her book on birth control in the modern world Elizabeth Draper says maybe this has changed in recent decades but she says wherever the man is supportive a woman is more likely to proceed with a pregnancy so there you have the notion not of men as kind of toxic masculinity enforcing birth but actually being supportive and and helping a woman to fulfill her fertility which is what many many women want to do Pierce you want to come back on yes thank you and many points were raised I'll go through the ones that I had time to write down um the young woman at the front talked about how it's inappropriate to talk of having a human a human being I think you said we have a human life or was the other on I wonder whether this is in the end of verbal dispute we have a living entity I think the point you're getting at is it's not viable it's not capable of survival outside the woman's body indeed that's the case unfortunately uh the pro-choice person then has a problem with the the post 24 or so week visas that are viable I mean some that you can have a debate about that but also as people like John Harris says and others will say you need to explain why viability is the important Criterion maybe it is but I think you've got too many people just say oh viability is a Criterion I'm never quite sure why I mean we need that actually depict as possibly more detail um on the question of embryology about human life beginning at conception well I wonder whether the term life is being used with a hidden evaluation written into it but assuming it's not it's just been used descriptively um okay but of course the whole debate the abortion debates about whether the mere fact that a member of the species human sapiens or with human DNA is alive is a good moral ground for granting us an absolute right to life and this of course what the whole debate's about merely saying we have a human being here it doesn't actually establish anything until you can establish the premises that would lead to the conclusion that we must never you must never kill it those premises involve the idea that if something is a human being it is it is sacred uh I.E that should never be taken deliberately um the gentleman over there is quite right to say that some of these more Hardline personists if you like people like John Harris Peter Singer the Sinister Oxford utilitarians as their sort of nowadays known they do they do bite the bullets you're quite right they say yes for the very reason that abortion is morally permissible infanticide is at least in principle morally permissible because you know neither the fetus nor the newly born child is capable of valence existence now the usual argument against that is to draw an idea where I didn't make much of which is I think underpinning Mary's view which is if something has a natural potential a natural potential to become an adult human beings with a full set of Human Rights because it's able to Value its life then it should be treated as if it were already had those rights the natural potential argument is interesting intriguing but also in certain contexts not entirely in other contexts so I'm not sure what to say about it but what do you I mean I think the sort of argument you're advancing here depends on the sort of shock tact approach to say you mean Peter singer's argument implies it's okay to kill babies in that case it can't be okay to kill fetuses because it entails it's okay to babies what you have to do there is just say okay you tell me why infanticide is always wrong tell me why you think it's wrong because we've got a human being that's reinstate sorry I've gone on but anyway hi I just want to comment on the Top's decision and the role that Society plays in can you stand up please and the role that Society plays with abortion so in my view the Dobb's decision was entirely right because it restored to it restored the issue of abortion rights to the public sphere to the public debate um and in 1973 you had a group of abortion campaigners who managed to convince a group of a small group of seven men that their worldview was the correct worldview and that worldview should be imposed on the rest of the United States without their Democratic consent so if the pro-abortion lobby believes that abortion was such a societal good they should really do the work and win the argument win the Battle of ideas and introduce a constitutional amendment or on legislation however and amend the text of the Constitution via the Article 5 to explicitly grant women the right to vote right to vote um rights and abortion sorry um so and then just a few questions on society um what does it say about the society that we live in that the price of women's participation in Civic life is the destruction of an unborn human human being and would the panel agree that when Society repeats the Mantra my body my choice what they're really saying is your body not my problem thank you let's do next thanks uh thanks for the nice plugs about my book um I have to say um I was hugely influenced at an earlier stage of my career in abortion provision by Mary actually who um made a point in a meeting that I was at about how useless the polarized discussion about abortion very often was and she made the point um which was actually a a very useful lesson for me and it's something that I've really tried to stick with that we should really consider the circumstances uh women are are in and how often they're quite ambivalent about the decisions that you make and I remember you saying to the meeting and to me that for many women off uh they often think that abortion is wrong but they think it's the right thing to do in their circumstances and I think that that is actually a very wise comment on the issue because one of the frustrating things about the abortion debate is that it just is such a touch point it spreads across these many things if you think I always think about it now as being like a Venn diagram where you've got philosophy you've got politics and you've got personal practical things and it stretches across all of these various different areas and it makes it almost impossible to do justice even if there were like a whole course of this running throughout the day um and I think that what we all have to remember is that you know for women seeking abortion they don't do it as a political standpoint they really don't they do it because of very contextual reasons that are going on in their life and we can say I would agree the the decision is often something that's more on a shade of gray than a black and white but it doesn't mean it's any less salad because of that because I think that typically often women will say I would prefer not to have an abortion I would have this child if but the if can be something as profoundly unsolvable as I would have this baby if I wasn't 16. or if I could get maternity leave or something or it can be if my partner wanted to have the baby as well but that if there's got to be something that she has to negotiate because she is the person who has to deal with it and I think that you know I agree with you I think that abortion is a profoundly moral issue and uh young women on the platform have made the case for why I think a woman has to be the person because to make that decision because she is going to be responsible for it she's responsible to herself for it she's responsible for society and the question that I would like to put for those people who think the abortion is wrong always and should never happen if when do we think it is right to take away a competent woman's decision to a competent woman's capacity when can we overrule that competent woman's capacity to make a moral decision that refers most profoundly to her own life because we can talk about the fetuses right to life until we're blue in the face but the one thing that we do know is that there is a living woman making moral decisions at the heart of it is when can we overrule that because I can't think of a single circumstance when I would want [Applause] I don't actually see why we're still debating abortion it is not a debate it's a right so I just don't understand why we're still debating it and saying that oh well the doctors this that and the other I'm sorry but doctors kill first of all babies is not a person but they kill people every day they really do and I just don't think it's fair to say but this and the other the it's wrong or right there's no debate it is we don't discuss other rights we don't discuss whether we have the right to water or food abortion because it's your body the baby is not a person it is a cell okay I just I can't I don't understand how even like women as a whole while why are we still debating this is your body it doesn't involve anyone else so what why why would it's not your body so why why are people talking about it because if you don't have to go through it it's not you don't have to bring up the child and to be fair at the end of the day if you have a child when you're young or not in a great state that is ultimately going to affect the baby once it's born and it's life thank you I wasn't gonna say anything about this but I do just want to say I understand your frustration completely but the reason that we have to debate it is so that we can continue to make the case if we stop debating and I am completely on your side completely 100 but if we stop debating this then what happens when people come in and start trying to debate us and say oh you're not allowed this right what we don't have anything to say unless we prepare these arguments so it is really important but um yeah I agree with you I I wanted to say that I think that the issue that I think peers posed um saying that this is a moral discussion I agree it is a moral discussion but the moral isn't about the fetus it isn't about the fetus it is about Liberty it is about the independent right for every human being not just women but human beings to do what they like with themselves and that is so fundamental and of course women are at the Forefront of that but if we take away autonomy for women that means that everyone else's autonomy gets stripped away from them or it means that the establishment can try to strip that away from them which is what we ultimately should be fighting and I would also like to just ask what the panel thought about the fact that I've read a really heartbreaking story about in the UK we've been discussing a lot about Roe v Wade about France but in the UK there are women in Scotland who have to drive down to Southampton to get the abortions that they need women who are in poverty and especially with the cost of living crisis you can't afford these petrol bills and they have to come down because in Scotland the rule is that I I believe you're not allowed to have a pregnancy you're not allowed to have an abortion in the third trimester uh why aren't we talking about that when it's happening in this country we need to [Applause] um after Road b word got overturned I went online and looked at some opinion polls of different states and I I'm pretty sure I saw that some states there was a majority um of banning abortions and I think possibly even a majority of women wanted to ban abortions I'm not quite sure about that I wanted to know what the panel thought was that the best most democratic process is it seven people in the Supreme Court making the decision or is it a state level in America um making their decision through elections which which could mean that it's that a state decides to ban abortion through a democratic process um I'll come back to I've I've circled Four Points I'd like to come back to and um two of them are from the first round so the first one would be um gentleman your uh question about the medical practitioner and the oath they took um I think Anne said it really well um where does the right of the mother disappear to when when you're talking about this about the right of the fetus I disagree with you I think that it is part of the woman it's not a separate entity by itself yeah um it I don't think uh that might the science will come into it because um I'll I'll move on to that but the yeah I think Anne said it very well so I'm just reiterating and said um again plugging Anne's book and for the next Point um with your question of when we don't know when life begins I think I need to clarify my point um life has been protected at different stages by different um by different by different thoughts Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century um beside a kind of uh his idea that should be a century 13th so it would yeah 14th 13th I read 13th somewhere but it might be 14th um Thomas Aquinas wanted to protect children from when they are animated in in not children fetuses when they are animated in the womb and when the microscope was was invented in the 17th century the church changed this to be um from when life begins at conception so my argument is the because this has changed it's constantly changing our idea our understanding of where life begins I cannot I don't agree that um the fetus or embryo is a cluster of cells and that's all it is we have to acknowledge the fact that it is a life it is something to some people incredibly precious but we cannot agree what is prevalent and what prevails through history is a narrative of choice and people and the in the 12th century I think there was a book in Spain written called picaresco and this was one of the first expressions of this choice this was the first expressions of um I won't go on on the tangent about that but to me what's prevalent is the expression of choice what isn't is that that life and how do I find when it begins has changed over Century so how can it be how can we know when it's true um and I'll stop there because yeah I'm taking up time um I'd also like to come back to the point you made um in the first round about by having abortion and legal you are forcing doctors to go against the Hippocratic oath I think it's is very important that doctors are able to um object to performing abortions therefore their interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath will be their own it's not imposed upon them because I think it's important that um this kind of and I suppose that is the ultimate point of decriminalizing abortion it's the point of non-judgment um the you know placing any restricts on abortion immediately places judgment on when is the right time to have an abortion um and so therefore if you have no restrictions and only kind of medical regulation you will now each person to make their own choice about when life begins their own choice about um what reasons are acceptable to access an abortion um I'd also like to come back to the the person who was very passionate that there is no debate about abortion we're here I think I think that is the the kind of the point that a lot of um older pro-choice campaigners are making about the current pro-choice movement with our Our Generation that um we're too binary ironically for a for a generation that is so against binaries um seemingly in every way we are kind of arrogantly binary about abortion um the the debate isn't one and it probably never will be on the moral ground because there is um as has been highlighted several times a degree of irreconcilability um but the kind of point of pro-choice campaigners is that that should be down to the woman to decide um and I think the whole discussion about um you know this there is also equally on the other side there is no debate that um a fetus is a human it is a life there are people that disagree I'm not saying I do I think that there there is something very important about a fetus you know it is where we've all come from um and many women will go on to give birth um hopefully of their own volition um and I think that to then whereas I going with this point where was I going um non-binary non-binary for see just as oh I was gonna reference um Dr Willie Parker he um as an abortion uh a Christian abortion provider in America um he always um comments that you can't answer moral and kind of um these moral questions was with really Stark scientific answers because science disagrees as Margo's already said so yeah so uh three quick things uh it appears if viability is the criteria um that does that include um newborns outside um the womb I I arguably that they're not viable because they still need to be cared for so why are they protected but not the behave inside the womb um to develop you said abortion any time any stage any reason does that include up until the day right before birth um and and also the third thing um is the word feeds us is used a lot um you know and I think it's just quibbling on what on on saying it's a person um because you know throughout history um whenever people did mental gymnastics to argue what is and isn't the person well we judge them quite agreeably to be wrong so why is the pro-abortion side any different now [Applause] the original wording of the Hippocratic Oath does include it's not interpretation an explicit prohibition on the termination of pregnancy as was as it was in ancient Greece um and I think and that's contradicted elsewhere in the so-called Hippocratic Corpus but I think that aspect of the original Hippocratic Oath is wrong and doctors should feel quite free to contravene it so I just I think it's worth being explicit about that the other thing I wanted to say is that it is it is legitimate to unpack the meanings of the words living human and being some people have been doing that peers cautioned against it a little bit um and looks at that in her book but her argument doesn't rest upon it but you can legitimately unpack the meanings of those words life means more than one thing human means more than one thing when someone says and I work in embryo research when someone says look we all know life begins at conceptionist scientific actually no if depends what you mean life um you know life the words life and human have an animal meaning about about things being biologically alive about us belonging to the species Homo sapiens and they have a more than animal meaning and it's quite legitimate to say that that more than animal meaning is acquired after birth and not prior to birth and then in that respect what you have with an embryo or a fetus at any stage of pregnancy is not necessarily living human or being foreign [Applause] I might be slightly emotive at this point my daughter was just 16. when she lobbed her pregnancy test across the counter across the dinner table we gave her four choices I'm quite pragmatic in my view one she could go for an abortion two she could strike out on her own or the fourth one was she could try and keep the baby oh sorry the third one was adoption the fourth one was she could keep her child and we would help her raise the child my grandson is now 27 years of age now comes the rub I worked in Brighton there were more abortions in Brighton than there were live births and we have a growth a birth problem in this country we have the birth rate has gone on as Tanked so our society will be in trouble come 50 years down the line that's one area of thinking about it the other area I want to talk about is effect an abortion can have on a man I would ask the question of all of you in this room have any of you ever had to pick up the pieces of a bloke who has tried to take his life because his partner has had an abortion without his knowledge I have on a number of occasions it ain't that simple it isn't just a simple case of pro-life or pro-death I am certainly not pro death but I'm sure it's also not just pro-life either there are ex there are instances where a termination abortion whatever term you want to use has to happen it's it's almost an imperative I will quote you an example which I had to had to pass a couple through a couple we've got two kids both perfectly happy trotting along joggling along with life they were both adopted third pregnancy comes along and the bomb goes off in the head where do I come from and they decided to look for it both of them both of them came from lines where there was a potential hereditary problem coming down the line genetically there was a double whammy in their third unborn child and they decided to have that child terminated whatever time you want to use the people around me and I was a pastor at the time what absolutely horrified that I didn't condemn them to which I said where's your Humanity for crying out loud it's not that simple it's not so black and white it's a much more emotive thing that we get involved in and you can philosophize about it all day long it's deeply emotive and we need to get real with that in my view um yeah so I think I come at this from a slightly different angle because I'm from Denmark a country where abortion is rarely debated and there is kind of a consensus that abortion is okay and that it should be legal um some you know it's 12 weeks like um in many European countries but the thing is in Denmark then a fifth of pregnancies are terminated um and I and this is kind of mirrored with a youth culture that has very liberal sexual values people sleep around um we have a hookup culture basically in our youth and especially young men are quite reluctant to go along with contraception there's a big um sort of I feel like in our youth culture there is kind of this idea that um that abortion is because it's easy to get no one is against it it kind of becomes a kind of contraception and young men who don't want to wear a condom because it makes um sex a bit less nice um kind of just think oh but here it's legal and easy to get an abortion so you know it kind of like and I think uh I want the panel to kind of discuss how you know I am totally for legal abortion and decriminalizing but I wonder whether we should have kind of a cultural um discussion about you know these very important points about you know it is a life that's all these things and whether we should be so flippant about it in a country like Denmark where every child who was born every one of those would probably have a great life in our very social uh like in our social welfare system that famously works really well um so yeah okay well just since I'm thinking my feet just on the last point about hookup culture I mean I think when you think about what caused the what people call the sexual revolution of the 1970s and it began in the late 60s I think the single most important causal Factor behind that whether it was good or bad was the availability of contraception for unmarried women now that is not to say I'm trying to condemn that or saying well isn't it shocking that in 1960s contradict but it is actually a causal factor and what people said at the time though I was too young myself to remember it but I know people said at the time well once you have contraception available for unmarried women and we get rid of the moralism and Victorian prudhary of past ages there'll be no need for abortion uh because everybody used contraception what is interesting is Mary brought out is that this simply didn't happen uh in fact the abortion rate massively Rose after that time um I mean we don't we don't actually have figures for illegal abortions after 67 so well maybe and there must have been some because but I mean all the trends suggested there was a massive rise so you could you could and moral you could go two ways on this you could you could take a very hard line position uh which not many people find at all appealing or attractive and say that the need for the the problem of abortion is the problem of the need for abortion that need will be almost entirely not entirely but largely eliminated if people kept sex to marriage if marriage were permanent if people were brought up to cultivate the virtues that make erotic love possible all those things then you know and that's it's a big ask but then you know morality itself is a big ask then the need would go away there's truth in it the troubles people aren't going to behave in that way and we have to have argument provision for those who don't um the other points about you know what is it what is it to be a human being when does Life Begin I mean debate about viability and is it a human life to some extent it is verbal I mean Sandy at the front I think nicely nicely put what the issue is uh it's it's philosophically unclear what's meant by life Humanity human being and so on I mean but as I said in my in my opening speech that the most powerful and most cope well not not powerful but the most clear anti-abortion argument is the old one which is that a human conceptus or at some point very soon after conception has a natural potential to develop into a rational person with a full set of Rights and responsibilities natural pretension I mean potential go back to Aristotle if you want to be pedantic about it uh is already implicit it's already there in the nature of that thing so even though the fetus conceptors can't now claim it right it is of a kind that is um that is essentially able to have rights and responsibilities now I think it's very difficult metaphysically to know how to take this argument um some examples make it plausible others don't I don't really buy it though um I think just because something has a potential even a natural potential to become a certain thing doesn't mean it's murder now to cut this thing off so if we're going to say it's murder it must be phenomenal some other reason I know people are shocked by the thought that infanticide might be permitted if uh abortion permissible for the personhood reason but maybe we have to bite that bullet does strike me if you're going to argue abortion it's good it's going to focus really on the women's rights argument you're going to be saying look um a woman has a right not to not to have to allow or not to allow another living entity to live off its body of her body now the counter argument that's going to say Well normally that's true but here um exercising your rights not to allow the fetus to live off the body would entail deliberate killing and deliberate killing is always wrong and moreover if you're going to say a feat is just part of a woman's body well the counter argument is yes if that you get if you're going to say that but it's a very special sort of body part of her body it has a natural potential to become another person that's really what's difficult see metaphysically I know I'm a philosopher and I would talk pompously in this way and you know bring my subject to the order but I the philosophy philosophy is relevant here the metaphysics is just very difficult on this question and we haven't even got on to the law here I thought there might be more discussion of law but how do you form laws in conditions of moral uncertainty this is what greatly bothers me about the whole thing I mean we know abortion law is actually a bit of a mess in this country it may surprise you to know that abortion is still illegal in this country by the way um it's just that it was made in 1967 lawful defenses were constructed so in other words it should be a defense against prosecution under either the 1868-861 offense against the person that or the 1929 infant life preservation act it should be made a defensive two doctors agree that your mental and physical health are going to be compromised and now I mean the details are too would be required me to be very long-winded but these I mean I think we have to think about it that's all I just say that first of all I'm very grateful we are having a debate and I really paid tribute to the academy of ideas for doing this because uh I've I really have uh appreciated what everybody has said I've learned something from everyone and I've particularly appreciate you know what the pastor said there that about condemning I don't think people should ever stand in Judgment of any individual and that's really a Christian sort of point of view um and you know Anne touched on the the whole point of ambivalence and you know I did a book about abortion back in this in the 80s and I attend I attended you know a whole lot of abortions as well and I must say the late the late abortions were extremely distressing but um she did I I did you know come across that feelings those feelings of ambivalence quite a lot with women and there was one woman who was I thought particularly touching where she said you know I have to have this I can't have this baby I'm I I I'll have to terminate the pregnancy however she gave up cigarettes between finding out that she was pregnant and actually getting the abortion because she didn't want to harm the baby and so there was that in the woman herself as de Boulevard's pointer there was already that instinct to sort of protect um now the the the the exam question was the future of abortion rights um you can never you can never um predict the future I think that abortion rights are very well embedded actually you know all over Europe and I think probably uh it's quite hard for pro-life people to be in the Public Square at all sometimes I mean when Therese coffee was made uh um the Secretary of State for health uh some abortion Advocates said she shouldn't be allowed to be in this position because she was a Roman Catholic and I can see the point where Roman Catholics won't be allowed to speak freely on this issue because it has become an Orthodoxy but I think there are two issues that I think in the future will guide will influence one is that um whatever whatever you call The Unborn or the fetus we are embryology is discovering all the time and it's fascinating to me seeing younger generation people the minute they find they're pregnant with a baby they want the first thing they do is put up a picture and put it on the internet and send you a picture of the is and my own grandchildren I that I saw them pictured on the screen when they were just when my daughter-in-law was just eight or ten weeks pregnant so that image that this is a living I didn't say a living being in my original I said a human life that this is a human life is there in science in biological science I think the second thing the second piece of pressure that will come is this fall infertility which is all over Europe all over the developed world and demographers are you know creating a lot of concern uh and if you say that I mean Denmark which this young lady mentioned very very thoughtfully they're actually Denmark is actually the government has advertised to couples stay at home this afternoon and make a baby the sort of trying to get couples to go to bed together and make a baby at the same time and the Finnish government I mean of course uh this notion of how do you you are you going to enforce a woman to be pregnant so I don't think that's going to happen at all but I think there will come a series of sort of persuasive um measures where I uh I think it's the minister for population in Finland who spoke recently about this on Radio 4 and she said we really need to make an effort to be encouraging to provide facilities to be positive about pregnancy and to give women and couples the chances to go forward and have babies and that's not uh abrogating if certainly in finland's the the right to choose but they there are ways of trying to be positive about the beauty of life thank you so um the question that was directed at me as to whether I think abortion should be available up till birth yes um I think I can come back to a lot of the points that have been raised with the the kind of the the the argument of autonomy I think especially the gentleman in blue who said he gave his daughter four choices I proposed you that the choice wasn't yours to make um I think that um I think it's very important um to advocate for each individual's autonomy and you also raise the kind of the the issue of the man and all of this um you know men being upset and I I argue that that is their responsibility um if I become pregnant um well I'm gay so there won't be a man involved hopefully but um uh a male partner but I think that um to lead a guy each man is responsible for his own reaction that's not a woman's responsibility um to deal with that um and so I think to put that on pregnant women is a very damaging thing to do um to make women responsible um for men's reactions um and finally to the the guy who hijacked the the Q a about late stage abortion um late stage abortion is really often kind of weaponized um by anti-abortion campaigners is something that's going to become really common it won't no woman wants a late stage abortion um it's something that is what is what is the alternative forced birth so instead of um I think it's so let me summarize my briefly um I think up until the point where the feast is no longer an inhabitant of the woman um that is her choice alone what to do with it once you um give birth to a fetus other people can intervene but I think forced birth as the alternative to um legal and uh kind of free abortion um is one much more medically risky for women and two really damaging for what where we place women in society so yeah I'll let Margo speak I keep mine really briefly because I think you've summarized a lot of what my one of what I wanted to say I want to um acknowledge what was talked about briefly yesterday um in the last session about bye bye baby and um the the gentleman the blue shirt about birth rate I think it's really really dangerous to talk about um women not having an abortion rights because for the greater good this idea of greater good of of of being of being coerced into into having children for the population I think it's it's an insincere decision and it does not reflect I keep going back to the same point of it's not a sincere Choice the woman makes as an individual in a society that is based on that individual right of right Democratic right now I'll leave it at that yes so there's a very serious issue that I don't think is being discussed enough and it's this if abortion is made illegal let's forget all of the other all of the other arguments what happens to all of The Unwanted newborns who are now left out onto the street the pro-life position is not pro-life it is pro but right now 25 million women and girls are forced to well don't have access to Safe abortion and we seem to forget that if we make abortion illegal it won't end abortion it will end safe abortion and the gentleman there talks about married couples not all married couples want to have children abortion was additionally legalized in the UK by a man named Enoch Powell and I'm sorry it was nothing to do with feminism the feminists have co-opted abortion but it's not about feminism it's about Liberty and it's about humanitarianism and I myself am morally opposed to abortion and I agree that the feminists don't really care about what the men men should have a say in it as well I agree but we need to at the end of the day acknowledge that getting rid of abortion will not stop abortion it will simply stop safe abortion it must yeah and women do need to take responsibility we do need to take responsibility contraception is important but we still need to have abortion there safe legal and wrath thank you as a woman in my 20s I wonder if the cultural drive to Champion abortion is giving us a blind spot to the inequalities the abortion exposes about women and also places on women and Mary I appreciated so much of what you had to say but you also said that um at the human life of the child is the only argument against abortion and I don't think that's right I think there's another argument in the abortion itself is bad for women I claimed pro-choice psychological scholar at David Ferguson has conducted a meta-analysis of all of the links of abortion and mental health he found that it raised the chances of anxiety depression suicidal Behavior alcohol misuse and Drug misuse no little girl grows up wanting to have abortion it's never the ideal outcome for anyone but women in deprived areas are almost three times more likely to undergo abortions in their lifetime and as our learned friend wisely pointed out uh in New York more black babies are reported that born we know this is affecting those of us in society who are less well-off less privileged so what if we were able to solve some of the ifs the and raised I I if I could have maternity care if I could access to support to nappies all these things why don't we as you know an equality movement as a feminist movement be looking to make abortion unnecessary thank you [Applause] I uh yeah obviously as a guy I feel like it's quite important that I get my can you speak into the mic a bit more please thanks yeah as a Mayo I feel like it's quite important I get my point across as well I do sort of disagree with what the lady on the right said about um a man really having that much of an important say in his woman's decision as well too whether or not he's kind of abort I do believe that a man should have an important say as uh my Christian Brethren also brought up it's the man does should have a say but it shouldn't be the final say it should be you can have a say but if you decide to have the baby and I do not wish to then you should try and at least leave me out of it I am religious but I also do believe that the woman should have the choice to abort should she decide to and it shouldn't be imposed from either side upon the other so there should be an even 50 50 split because if the child is born is a 50 50 split on the relationship and the the roles that are played in raising that child there should also be a 50 50 split on whether or not that child is brought into the world uh things would be a lot easier in this debate which I do think is important if people were more honest I think and I think there's a huge I I don't understand when people who are clearly religious won't even mention God if they are against abortion because they believe in God's will rather than the woman's will why not argue it in those terms give it a go people used to do it and I do think that otherwise we end up with moving to social justice anti-racism mental health harms and it just becomes incredibly slippery topic which I think is a tactical um uh it's a tactic on behalf of the um of the anti-abortion lobbies and I I think it's it would be far easier if they just said we think that the world should be more Godly and we would prefer more people to act in the way that we think they should act and you know then you'd have to persuade people to your way of life and if you can't do that then I'm not quite sure what you plan to do I mean are you going to protest more clinics are you going to obstruct more women I don't know what the solution will be um if you're not going to achieve a more Godly world I just wanted to comment on I I feel like the debate amongst the audience has been quite uncharitable to men I think this man's point over here was a legitimate point and I don't I think that perhaps your interpretation was a little bit unfair I really respect what you've done and what you've spoken about and I disagree with you um but I think you know you said your daughter was 16 you know did you say yeah yeah so so I yeah I mean but what I'm saying is that you know he said I gave my daughter four choices to think that as a father you know he had a responsibility and I think it's unfair to yourself oh he gave her full choices um this guy here like Christian non-Christian you know this this doesn't really matter like the father is involved in this as well I think it's we shouldn't just flip it lead us miss the man um they should be involved and it's really really sad I know lots of guys who you know feel desperately they want to have child with their partner and their child may be very against that and I I think we need to respect the men in this too and don't just pretend it's a woman's issue thank you thank you I'm afraid that's all from the floor we're just going to give the panelists once point please one sentence um I'm gonna focus on asthma did the future of uh abortion rights and um I'm going to reiterate what I said at the beginning this can only be resolved by a society that this can only be resolved by letting Society choose by letting through a democratic process for society to choose and to vote or or to rely on on who they've elected but that to me is the only way that we can resolve the legality of it the morality someone made a good point of the morality of it may never be resolved but the legality of it can we can we can apply them all at the end I'll just say briefly actually in answer to the lady who's just spoken you can be a person of Faith but you can also be a person who believes biological evidence I don't place I don't actually place my uh my uh credence about the human life on Saint Thomas Aquinas although he was a very interesting Theologian who had a very good uh some very good thoughts about the just War but I it was really to me the Revelation that came it all comes from embryology and Science and seeing for myself that this was a human life at the same time I you know I as I said before I think we should you know women often face very difficult circumstances there's some very difficult times and I think women are not you know I would like to see a society in which women are much more supported to to go forward to Motherhood and that it shouldn't be such a difficult obstacle race in so many cases where women have to sacrifice something which is really rewarding for so many women because Society has constructed things in a way which is which which just makes it so difficult thank you I'm gonna again focus on kind of the future of abortion right and especially in the UK and express that there is progress the fact that we're having this debate there is progress the fact that telemedical abortion is now available from home there is progress but abortion is still a criminal act um as Sandy has already mentioned um and I think that we need to as the pro-choice um as the pro-choice side need to keep gaining momentum we can't become complacent with where we are now um and I think for a choice to be autonomous um as I think everyone in this room will hopefully um support being at this event that there needs to be an absence of external influence as much as possible and the state imposing its judgments on women um does not allow that therefore I think for women to be the freest they can be in a society we have to be free to access abortion um as and when um and for whatever reason we choose because we are the ones that will end up dealing with the Fallout everyone discussing men is great but um I think you give um a lot of men too much credit and you know men are okay men can't men can leave men can leave okay here's final word briefly thank you well uh just to say again what I said before I'm not trying to say that philosophical or ethical reasoning will solve the issue but it is very important as part of solving the issue I mean you can debate whether the sort of reason I talked about is relevant at all not just to this question but to any moral question but I think we need to try to reason about this as well as possible we need to be aware of bogus arguments which are convenient in this context but would never pass master Elsewhere for example arguments that appeal to the alleged mental ill effects on women's mental health of abortion or indeed of abortions on on women's male Partners I mean this sort of argument might just as well be applied against mastectomies or hysterectomies we must never have hysterectomies look at the number of people who suffer Dreadful mental health but sometimes it may be medically necessary and similarly in the case of abortions it may be morally at least arguably morally recently in those cases so we need to you know strip away this sort of thing and get to the issue the issue is we have a conflict or potential conflict of interests or rights we have a very strong presumption that no woman should be made to or indeed is obliged to let even another person live off her body that's a very powerful argument we should Grant it we should also grant that there's something different about abortion because there is at least an entity that has a natural potential to turn into a person as we are and this is at least arguably morally important that the metaphysics incredibly difficult and controversial that's why we need to go on discussing it without prejudice as to religion by the way I'm in a way but I know that people who take a pro-life position often they are religious and but it's not dishonest of them to separate that from theology because they do think especially if they're Catholics to believe in natural law they do think you can discuss these things uh in a non-religious way my own suspicion though when it comes to the fundamental deduction of the sanctity of human life and this is what's doing the moral work here it is the doctrine of the sanctity of human life my suspicion is that in the end there can't be a purely secular defense of that you probably do have to refer to something like a Divine Purpose for distinctively human beings but just throwing that spam into the works I can't develop it now thank you thank you all [Applause] [Music]

Channel: worldwrite

Views: 1,107

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Id: xkUa1eH27NI

Length: 89min 49sec (5389 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2023