The Wider Implications

Women's susceptibility to the unplanned birth of a child is used to discriminate against them in employment and throughout public life. Employers refuse to promote women or accept them for positions of responsibility on the grounds that they might get pregnant and have to leave. Only a few years ago, a large national bank had a policy of sacking women upon marriage, in anticipation of their becoming pregnant! Mortgage finance is refused to women on these grounds also. In fact, when women try to make any kind of long-term commitment, they come up against this barrier of being considered a "poor risk".

We wish to state here that we firmly believe there should be no handicaps placed on women simply because they have children, and we would draw the committee's attention to other submissions which deal with the need for maternity leave, childcare and so on. But we insist that if women are to be able to enjoy equal opportunity with men, they must be given the means to plan their lives, and this includes the means to exercise freedom page break of choice over when and if to have children.

This woman was the victim of a criminal abortion. Her body was photographed exactly as it was found by police in a bloody and barren motel room; exactly as it had been abandoned there by an unskilled, profiteering abortionist. Becoming frightened when "something went wrong" he left her to die alone.