On Twitter, the socially conservative British journalist, Peter Hitchens, re-circulated an interview his late brother, Christopher, gave with Crisis magazine in 1988. Christopher was left-leaning, though with notoriously non-conformist views, and a staunch atheist. He had some very interesting thoughts on abortion.
From the interview:
“I don’t think feminism should contradict humanism.”
“Nobody on the left can avoid noticing that the so-called ‘pro-life’ forces are overwhelmingly female and from income groups that traditionally voted Democratic. Yet this simple rebellion by what one might dare to term humble people has been written off as reactionary by people who can’t or won’t see the essential dignity of the right-to-life position.”
“[In the 1960s] Margaret Thatcher voted to keep capital punishment, to keep homosexuality criminal, to make divorce harder to get, and for the abortion bill. I gather that she’s since changed her position on the latter. My own vote would have been, as so often, exactly the reverse of hers.”
“I had a queasy feeling about the disposability of the fetus. This queasy feeling has not gone away.”
“Once you allow that the occupant of the womb is even potentially a life, it cuts athwart any glib invocation of ‘the woman’s right to choose.’”
“I would prefer to see abortion as a federal issue. Nothing is more horrible than inconsistency on the life question. Just look at capital punishment. The tremendous variance from state to state totally undermines the idea of stable justice or fair retribution. This moral objection applies whether or not capital punishment is a deterrent, which I don’t think it is.”
“I would like to see something much broader, much more visionary. We need a new compact between society and the woman. It’s a progressive compact because it is aimed at the future generation. It would restrict abortion in most circumstances. Now I know most women don’t like having to justify their circumstances to someone. ‘How dare you presume to subject me to this?’ some will say. But sorry, lady, this is an extremely grave social issue. It’s everybody’s business.”
Read the full interview here.