My Foetus
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
22 Aug 2004
Julia Black, who made the documentary, expressly states this as her intention. She asks herself whether she can still be pro-abortion after she has lifted “the veil of secrecy” and faced the facts about abortion.
She emerges from her investigation, which includes filming the termination of a four-week pregnancy, in a contradictory position; “opposed to what abortion is but still pro-choice”.
Many people prefer not to discuss “what abortion is”, and certainly don’t want to be disturbed by accurate descriptions of what happens. Black herself says she finds the graphic photographs of aborted children offensive and outrageous, and thinks they should be censored.
But she also acknowledges that pro-choice forces have often preferred to silence pro-life opposition to abortion rather than engage it. She interviews a pro-life woman politician who was jailed in the UK for holding one of these graphic images at a public demonstration.
Black says her documentary means that pro-life arguments cannot be ignored any longer, and that informed discussion and debate about abortion can now be resumed. In this she has performed an important public service, as has the ABC in making the documentary available to Australian viewers.
Black’s father is an abortionist who founded Marie Stopes International, one of the biggest international providers of abortions. He tells her in the documentary that there are 47 million abortions globally each year. What talents have been lost to the world with these children?
The documentary portrays a violence that is commonplace in Australia but which is not regarded as violence. The abortion takes place in a medical clinic under local anaesthetic and lasts about three minutes. It is easy, hassle-free.
But the long-term moral suffering of many women who have undergone abortions is not shown or mentioned. There is another veil of secrecy covering this suffering.
A prominent abortion doctor tells Black that there is no getting away from the fact that abortion is “not very nice”. But the thought that the child in the womb is unwanted is for him the most pressing reason to perform abortions, even late-term abortions. Above all, he says, he does it for the child.
This doctor is intelligent, reasonable and obviously sincere. He is also terribly wrong. What right has society to destroy the unwanted?
After the abortion has been performed, the doctor tells Black that what is needed above all is “respect and compassion, for this” – nodding to the “products” of the abortion - “and for the woman”. It is a chilling scene.
Something is seriously wrong if abortion is the best we can do – out of “respect and compassion” - for a woman and an unplanned or imperfect baby.
