Handmaids' Tales

Cardinal O’Connor’s comments today seem to me to raise some interesting issues, but also shed as much heat as light (apologies to Matt for the metaphor). So, after you’ve read it, my two pence worth. “Women demand tougher laws to curb abortions”. 1) Women are demanding this, and since they are the ones with authority on the issue, we have learned since the 1980s (rightly in my opinion) their newfound doubt (their conversion perhaps?) is, as the insinuation goes, that much more decisive. Thus the headline speaks for itself and seems to need no further justification. 2) The recommendation gleaned from the small group canvassed are not strictly speaking asking for a ‘curbing’ of abortions; the loaded term implies quantity rather than the real issue - time limit. 3) I know exactly what programme the Cardinal has been watching – I watched it myself. And whilst I marveled at the technology which can show us a grimacing foetus, I don’t think it changes the fundamentals of the issue in any more than a contingent, subjective way (and the programme itself was tendential in its use of a voice-over  to humanise a foetus; foetuses don’t speak, and it is somewhat irresponsible to suggest otherwise). 4) The key issue remains that the right to choose is more about the foreseen conditions of motherhood, of the situation - economic, social - in which a child is to be raised, and not the simple and Manichean issue of termination of a depersonalized versus a personalized entity. The Cardinal is looking within when he should be looking without.

Comments

[et alia]

YH, any info on those numbers? How large was the sample? What were the actual questions posed? It seems dubious on its face.

[YH]

MORI's website says the following:
"# Results are based on 1,790 British adults aged 16-64 years
# Data are weighted to reflect the national population profile
# Where results do not sum to 100, or 'yes - total' sums do not add up exactly, this may be due to multiple responses, computer rounding or the exclusion of don't knows/not stated."

Which sounds to me like a significant margin of error for a small sample group. Interesting too that the article interviews two pro-lifers and one pro-choicer. It's one of these pieces of journalism which seems almost to blaze a trail for the government's legislative agenda, just as the myriad of healthy eating/lifestyle TV shows out there blaze a trail for the devolving of health to the individual and away from the NHS.

[Matt]

Unnecessary apology unnecessarily accepted. Excellent, timely post.