Whose Choice Anyway

collapse11, death12. Women are not told that they may suffer cervical incompetence13, subsequent miscarriage14, psychological trauma or mental illness15.

The substantive evidence is ignored or twisted by propagandists. The battle cry 'Keep it legal, keep it safe!' bears no relation to the truth, but is more easily available than the volumes of medical evidence which cast doubt on the safety of abortion. The health of women and children's lives are too valuable to allow this situation to continue. The fixed ideological barricades have stood for nearly a quarter of a century. They dehumanise each of us.

Feminists Opposed to Eugenic practices was founded in 1985 by a group of radical women who refuse to accept the terms of the abortion 'debate'. We object to rightto-life beliefs being caricatured as right-wing and pro-family, and we agree with Robyn Rowland's observation, 'To win the abortion issue the right to life must maintain its humanist position which the New Right may threaten.'16 We are women with feminist convictions who oppose any element of social policy or law which discriminates against people on the basis of age, creed, sex, race, sexual orientation or disability. We are concerned about eugenic policies which interfere with the fertility and reproductive health of women. We are particularly anxious about the exploitation of all women by the pornography industry. We are committed to upholding the basic human rights of all human beings - in which we include the right of women to be emancipated and the right of children to live. We seek the practical application of a theory of sexual politics based on justice, the recognition of individual dignity and the right to live. Central to our philosophy is the conviction that the inherent value and inalienable rights of individuals cannot be violated legitimately.

We contend that abortion is an illegitimate, subversive, barbaric and fundamentally mysogynistic practice. It is illegitimate - irrespective of the letter of the law because it violates the integrity of the woman it purports to serve. It requires the surgical invasion of a living healthy woman whose physical and psychological health may be endangered without her prior knowledge or informed consent. It is illegitimate because it exploits human weakness, selfishness and fear in the name of 'choice' so that policies of demographic engineering17 and eugenics18 can be practised without check. It is illegitimate because it kills people.

The subversiveness of abortion can only be fully understood by reference to its history. Its defenders include the Marquis de Sade - the notorious advocate and practitioner of the sexual torture and murder of women and children.19 An expansionist policy was implemented by the Nazis contrary to the impression given by contemporary abortion advocates.20 Gloria Steinem states that 'Nazi doctrine was unequivocally opposed to ... abortion.'21 But on October 19th 1941