Tag Archives: BBC Radio 2

Abortion – what’s the story?

Lifestyle or self-determination?

What should be the focus of debates about abortion in Britain?

The Daily Telegraph reports ‘lifestyle abortions warning as serial termination numbers surge’.

And I’ve had a sporting ding dong with the catholic former MP Ann Widdecombe on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show, during which she berated the ‘sheer number’ of abortions and women ‘putting their careers ahead’ of a ‘life in the womb.’

What is a lifestyle abortion? This is an example of bad language; of what the great Doreen Massey calls ‘vocabularies of neoliberal economy’ — the way the very language we speak has been skewed by the Right.

‘Lifestyle’ is associated with conspicuous consumption; it is associated with IKEA identity — we are what we consume, we are our kitchen cabinets and our build-it-yourself beds, we are endlessly re-making ourselves by endlessly discarding cushion covers. Lifestyle is anything from gardening to diet; from sex to sexual orientation. Lifestyle connotes pleasure.

However, this coupling is about ‘style’ rather than ‘life’.

So, abortion trends are being set up as consumption rather than self-determination; women’s control over their own bodies becomes caprice. That, in the misogynist mind is the cause for concern. The Daily Telegraph, it seems, is on a mission.

But what does the evidence tell us about who is having abortions, and when? And what, in any case, is a cause for concern?

Something significant is happening, however, but it isn’t about either ‘shopping’ or ‘surges’.

According to the 2013 statistics recently published by the Department of Health, abortion is declining, including among teenagers; the ratio of early abortions is rising, and the rate of medical (pill) rather than surgical abortions is rising, too:

If there has been a surge it is in early abortions: under 13 weeks — now 91 per cent.

Under 10 weeks: 58 per cent in 2003, 80 per cent in 2013.

The proportion of medical (a pill) — as against surgical — abortions has reached almost half, at 49%. A decade earlier it was only 17 per cent.

The implications for women themselves and for the National Health Service (the provider for the overwhelming majority of women) are palpable: abortion is less costly to the health and the funds of both women and the NHS.

There is another story — the numbers are falling: at 16 per 1000 women, this is the lowest since 1997.

Teenage abortions are also declining:

Under 16

  • 2013: 2.6 per 1000
  • 2003: 4 per 1000

Under 18

  • 2013: 11.7 per 1000
  • 2003: 13 per 1000

The number of women who have had more than one abortion has risen to 37 per cent, compared to 33 per cent.

And the number of women having abortions who already had a child rose from 47 per cent in 2003, 53 per cent in 2013.

The Daily Telegraph and Ann Widdecombe have a new target: not the ‘not bovvered’ teenagers, but mature women making choices.

They interpret these figures as indicative of women having serial abortions, ‘a casual attitude to multiple abortions’, says Widdecombe.

Women don’t have casual attitudes to abortion. We don’t know how to explain these figures.

Unsurprisingly the age at which most abortions happen is 21-22 years. What is these women’s experience? Why aren’t their male partners using condoms? Are they having an abortion in their 40s — having had one in their 20s? Do they think they are past getting pregnant? Do the men they have sex with use contraception, and if not why not?

There isn’t a surge of serial abortion but there is evidence that, among older women, having a child doesn’t necessarily mean they feel able or willing, or safe, to have another.

What used to be called ‘family planning’ and reproductive choice is now traduced as ‘surges’ in ‘casual attitudes’ among women who ought to know better. The moral right always needs to blame some woman or other.

A Very British Murder

Reports of the horrendous death of  Bijan Ebrahimi — a disabled man living in Bristol — seem doomed to point in all the wrong directions. He was murdered — beaten and torched to death — by neighbours who spread the rumour that he was a paedophile.

Bijan Ebrahimi by Nicholas Razzell

Bijan Ebrahimi, a ‘caring loving and unselfish’ man according to The Independent (Photo by Nicholas Razzell)

But the rumour could have been staunched by the police who investigated the allegation and found no basis for it. And police could have talked down Mr Ebrahimi’s assailants had they done their primary duty to the public: to keep the peace.

There are the inevitable squeals that Britain is obsessed by hunting down paedophiles — my discussion on the Jeremy Vine Show on 29th October 2013 repeated this theme.

It isn’t back up by evidence: the statistics announced in the same week, discovered by Labour MP Emily Thornberry, confirms that impunity meets people interested in raping or sexually offending against women and children.

But the murder of Mr Ebrahimi exemplifies the toxic mix of muddle, indifference and fury that surrounds the issue.

The story of Mr Ebrahimi’s demise really begins with the authorities’ failure to ensure public safety on his estate in Brislington, Bristol. He’d complained about children damaging the flowers and apparently, in frustration at his failure to engage anyone to stop this, he began taking photographs of the children spoiling his garden.

According to The Independent Mr Ebrahimi had been harassed by ‘youths’ attacking his flower basket. He called the police, he took photographs of the perpetrator, he defied police advice to stay inside his flat — effectively making him a prisoner in his own home — and when police finally arrived on 12th July a crowd gathered around the flat and shouted ‘paedo’.

Police arrested Mr Ebrahimi, checked out the allegations and found no evidence whatsoever, and returned him back to the flat where, by then, he was living amidst vital hostility.

On 14th July Mr Ebrahimi was dead — he had been beaten and torched. Several members of Somerset and Avon police service are the subject of disciplinary action and both the police and the local authority are scrutinizing the sequence of events.

What is apparent already, however, is that a disabled person’s life has been ruined and then taken; the primary duty of the police, public safety and security, was neither contemplated nor implemented.

When he was returned to his home, his angry neighbours were not addressed, they were not disabused of their prejudices, and the ‘youths’ were not called to account.

What is community policing if not this?

Was this case a sign of a society gone mad, obsessed by paedophiles, suspecting abusers of lurking behind every hedge?

Well, no, actually.

Is Rochdale so different from anywhere else? In 2012 a group of men were jailed for abusing at least 47 girls — even though evidence had been available to the authorities about these predators since 1991.

Is Oxford so different from anywhere else? In 2011 the police investigated evidence that a group of girls had been sadistically abused by a group of men — despite the efforts of some of these girls to tell their story to the authorities for eight years. It was the girls, not the men, who had been stigmatized.

In West Yorkshire, a group of men was jailed in 2008 after organizing the abuse of an estimated 50 girls at two schools. Did no one notice?

In the very week that the trial of Mr Ebrahimi’s tormenters was reported, the Labour MP Emily Thornberry announced that the investigation of rape and sex offences had dropped:  the number of rapes referred by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service in 2012-13  was 5404 — that is 2700 fewer than in 2010-11.

Thornberry commented that there has been a steady decline in the number of cases being referred to the CPS by the police, despite a steady rise in the number of people feeling confident enough to go to the police.

The current number of referrals to the CPS is the lowest in five years.