Wednesday 21 May 2008

24-week limit intact

I waited for the vote on abortion time limits last night with what my family fondly describes as my 'Blake face'. That's the face I pull when numbers don't make sense or when I just don't get someone's point. I was sitting with a friend who was explaining that she, as a woman who supports choice, knows a 12-week time limit is ridiculous, yet was starting to believe there was science to back a reduction in the time limit.

My friend is a clever, discerning woman who supports women's right to choose and yet she had begun to believe the stories and she is far from being the only one.  Reporting about abortion and the time limit in recent months has, it seems, blurred the line between scientific fact and anti abortionist fiction for some of the general public.

So today at Brook, an agency that has as a core value the right to safe and legal abortion, we celebrate and applaud parliamentarians who chose science over dogma in support of women. We thank colleagues and friends who have worked tirelessly in recent months, and we are thinking seriously about what we need to do to ensure young people know the facts as they are, not as they have often recently been reported.

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