Some thoughts on abortion

The abortion debate is probably one of the most contentious of all. It affects people on a very personal level, so most people have very strong opinions on it.

I'm not here to debate this, more to share a way of thinking which might help people. If it doesn't help you, then ignore it. The world does not need another circular intractable abortion debate.

In fact most people (in my experience) fall into one of two extremist polarised camps.

1. Abortion should be freely available to all, up to a certain date (usually in the months). If one parent (usually the mother but not always) desires it, nobody else shall interfere.

2. Abortion should be banned except in a medical emergency, feotal non-viability, or to save the mother's life.

These are both extremist views, and they are mutually exclusive. So the abortion debate is about winning and losing. Both of these policies are disastrous for vast numbers of people. Whichever side wins, vast numbers of lives and entire families will be ruined.

But put it another way. These are the things people really care about:

1. Nobody should be forced to bring an unwanted child into the world

2. Living things (especially human) should not be killed except under dire need.

3. People should be able to have sex without consequences.

They are not exclusive.

Everybody wants the same three things. And society can have all of those things, at the same time.

Let's put the issues in the third and final arrangement:

• Three weeks. Three weeks is a long enough time to visit a doctor or pharmacist under any circumstances. There is no reason for anyone to wait longer than that between sex and thinking about (panicking about) pregnancy.

So the issue is access to contraception and to information about contraception. People know about condoms and pills and patches. Everybody knows that 100% effective contraception does not exist. But that is only true is you want it to be - if people are taught ineffective contraception methods. Most people have never heard about ovulation testing or tube ligation. But they both are effective. They need to be as accessible and publicised. Depending on condoms is a method designed to fail.

• Day 21. Before this the fetus has no organs. No heart, no brain. Although it is technically a living, metabolising, growing human, there's not such a big ethical problem killing somebody with no heart or brain.

Access to effective contraception obviates the need for abortion for the vast majority of cases/people. But you can imagine failure cases. So this is the safety net. Abortion up to 21 days.

And abortions must be as rare as possible, because they do destroy families. There is no good answer to a lot of the problems with abortion - who needs to be informed, consulted or give authorisation, how do you measure 21 days...

• 24 hours. In a medical crisis, like sepsis, a patient can be dead in 24 hours. There are many circumstances unorthadox medical treatment is necessary. There are too many to list or legislate for. The law should never allow a doctor to believe that he can allow a patient (or two) to die, just because of a political/legal issue. He doesn't have time to consult a lawyer and he shouldn't ever need to.

Part of the motivation here is to bring human medicine up to the standards of vet medicine. Vets do not normally perform abortions. They perform sterilisations. They do this because this is the ethical way. In the past, people used to drown kittens, now they spay kittens. Let's be like the kittens.