Like a boss.
Then there’s Judith Woods in the Telegraph. “What a shameful time to be Irish, Catholic and anti-abortion,” she writes affectingly. “As I’m all three, I hang my head in mortification.” She goes on to explain why she hopes Halappanavar’s case won’t lead to liberalisation in Ireland: “Once you have seen four cells under a microscope in an IVF laboratory and by some miracle witnessed them become an embryo, then a foetus, a baby, a little girl, it is utterly impossible not to believe that life begins at the moment sperm and egg fuse.”
If Woods understands IVF, presumably she knows that several embryos are created for each attempted pregnancy: treating each one as if it were the moral equivalent of a child would mean implanting them all, and exposing the woman to the dangers of multiple pregnancy – and the embryos to a competitive uterine environment that would mean none of them survive. Even the self-professedly pro-life tend to recognise in practice that women must control their fertility, or be dragged under by the consequences. Savita was a living woman, full of light and love, and in her last duress doctors denied her that control. The poverty of anti-abortion rationalisations tells us exactly how little value such logic really places on women’s lives.
After Savita Halappanavar’s Death, The Brutal Irony Of ‘Pro-Life’ Is Exposed (Sarah Ditum, Guardian)
