Whose Choice Anyway

The lobby journalists had the job of reporting the Parliamentary news and analysing what it meant for the Bill. Where much of the initial problem with the media coverage of the Abortion (Amendment) Bill lay was in the comment and features of journalists who had the time and the indulgence to say what they wished.

There were two notable examples of this. The outstanding one was Polly Toynbee's 'With Men and God on His Side' feature in the Guardian (1 October 1987). This was based on an interview with me. Mistakenly, I supposed that the Guardian would be objective and professional in accepting that there was at least an argument to be had. The polemic that appeared says more about the writer's motives than mine. In justification of some of the questions she asked which had nothing to do with the Bill - she said it was as well that I answered her as no doubt some 'gutter' Fleet Street Sunday paper would be delving into my private life. It seemed an odd approach from a supposedly reputable newspaper.

The Guardian published a letter from me regretting the tone of the article and gave space on the 'Agenda' page, allowing me to set out my arguments for the Bill. It was the first and only time the Guardian has allowed an article setting out a prolife position to be published. They have, however, published letters favourable to the Bill. After this experience I take some of their strictures about intellectual freedom and press censorship less seriously.

At the opposite end of the newspaper market the Sun weighed in with some interesting journalism. The 'Fiona on Friday' column (29 January 1988) considered it 'obscene that a very, very, confirmed bachelor' should dare to try to tell a woman what her feelings on abortion should be. I was, in fact, trying to amend the 1967 Abortion Act. The article called me a liar and an insensitive fool and said that I claimed that the picture used in the campaign was a foetus alive and safe in its mother's womb. At no point did I make that claim; I made it quite plain that the picture showed a foetus at 18 weeks gestation. Over 4,000,000 copies of the Sun sold that day, so more than 10,000,000 people might have got the wrong idea of what the Bill intended to do. Indeed the terms of the Bill were not referred to anywhere in the article.

But gradually, articles began to appear that reflected pro-life concerns. Two pieces

by Times journalist Ronald Butt exemplified this. In an article entitled 'Being Precise About Alton' (14 January 1988) he said: 'In this explicit age uncompromising abortionists think it indelicate to mention the nuts and bolts of abortion, but they are at the crux of the matter.' And in that he exposed one of the media's biggest responsibilities in the campaign: they tried to clean up the issue for public consumption. In doing so they abdicated much of their responsibility to inform their readers of exactly what a late abortion entailed. Mr Butt continued: