TRIGGERnometry - The Case for Abortion - Ann Furedi

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

Ann Furedi is the former CEO of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the UK's largest independent abortion provider. Ann is also the author of The Moral Case for Abortion. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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thank you for enabling me to put my life back on track is huge. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a former chief executive. of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Anne Faradie.

The problem we have with this episode is we lost the footage we had from the main camera. We've already fired our producer for the 100th time. Hasn't helped. So in this episode, everything is as normal. The only thing is you won't see us front on, which I'm sure will be a relief. Anne Faradie, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to have you on.

You know that we interviewed Dr. Callum Miller recently, who has a very different position to you, abortion, I think it's fair to say. I think it's fair to say he does. And we had a long discussion where we were kind of probing some of his arguments. And at the end of it, in fact, at the beginning, I said, this is our first foray into this. We're going to get someone on who has a different view. And at the end of it, he actually said, well, I can recommend you some people who are who disagree with me vehemently, but who are very good. And you were right at the top of that list. So welcome to the show. Thank you very much indeed. Great to have you on. Tell everybody who are you. How are you where you are, what has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

Oh my God. Right. So this is going to be a very short, very short account of who I am and where I am. So I'm actually a journalist way back in the day who got very interested in women's reproductive health through doing medical writing, ended up. working for the Family Planning Association, running their press office, doing parliamentary advocacy work around abortion right the way back in the early 90s. It's probably about before you guys were born. When actually abortion was... She's very charitable.

No, no, no, no. But, you know, abortion was way more controversial than it is now. And at that time, the campaigning was largely, about a lot of it was about funding in the NHS because about half of women had to pay for their own procedure because it wasn't really seen as something that women should be able to get on the NHS. And I went from there to running what was the,

turned out, well, ended up being the largest abortion provider in Britain with a good advocacy department to make sure the politicians and the public understood why women needed abortions. And I always used to describe it as the best job in the world, but I always decided that I would finish work when I got to 60. So I'm now focusing on writing.

I've gone back and studied philosophy at university. I'm doing a lot of dog walking. So I'm talking to guys like you. Yeah. But it's a pleasure to have you on. So let's get straight into it. I pushed back on Callum quite a bit, but I also agreed with quite a lot of what he said, I think. Callum's main argument from memory was essentially that our job is people is to protect the most vulnerable people in society.

And unborn children are that. That is a life. And taking it is immoral and wrong. What say you to that? Well, funnily enough, there are a lot of areas that Callum and I would agree on. And I do think that abortion is taking a life of sorts. But the one thing that I think is profoundly immoral is forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy and have a child when she really, does not want to do that. And I also think it's profoundly immoral to force a woman to have an abortion

if she wants to have a child. And I think that these are the whole thing about how you deal with your pregnancy and what kind of family you have is something that is deeply, it's a deeply intimate moral consideration that should be made by. by the person who is going to live the life of responsibility for it. And you can have an opinion on it, I can have an opinion on it. Callum can have an opinion on it. But at the end of the day, it is the woman who is pregnant, who is going to look at herself every day in the mirror,

knowing the decision she made about that pregnancy. And I think that she should be responsible for it. And to do that, she has to be able to choose. And that's one of her choice. And because, you know, based on what you've said, to go in with the logic of your own argument, if abortion is killing, in what other area would we allow people to make a decision for themselves

that allows them to kill someone else for their own benefit? Whatever, however important that benefit is. Yeah. And there are no other areas in which, we would do that, which is why when people say, oh, women can have abortions just because it's inconvenient to have a child are completely wrong. I mean, we wouldn't allow people to bump off their parents, would they? Because it's inconvenient to be caring for your elderly parents. But pregnancy is utterly different. You know, when a woman is pregnant,

the life that we're talking about here is actually growing inside her. It's something that's going on within her actual body. No one else can intervene in to affect that life without interfering or intervening in her life. Once she's given birth, that's obviously entirely different. teams of social workers and nurses and whatever can be, you know, doing stuff for that baby. But up until that moment, you know, she is the person who's affected. And I think it's curious that we lose track of that. We kind of lose sight of it.

So if you think about it, people will say, oh, well, you know, surely it's okay to insist that a woman should go on with the pregnancy, at least until the child's born, because it's a human life. But, you know, you wouldn't say to, you wouldn't say to me, you have to give your kids. to keep somebody alive, or you have to make a blood donation to keep another person alive. Because that way, you know, forcing people to do things with their own bodies for other people, I think that really is the road to hell. You know, these things are seen as being voluntary. And I think however much it bothers us, I think we have to see abortion. as being the choice of the person who's living the life.

You know, we talk about when does life begin or become morally significant in the womb. But you have to remember that at no point does a woman become morally less significant or morally less of a person because she's pregnant. So why would we take away her wrong? rights to deal with our own body in a way that we wouldn't do beforehand. That's, you know, that's the way that I kind of reckon it. And that doesn't mean, you know, it doesn't mean that I have got some great love of abortion as a procedure. Actually, I've got a great,

a great presumption in favour of life. I think having a child is wonderful, but I've got a great love of people's individual freedom. And I think that, you know, having a child is something that we have to give people freedom to decide about. I couldn't agree with you more on the liberty about your own body and just touching back on COVID. That argument became deeply. unfashionable when we were talking about mandatory vaccinations? Well, it is something that is deeply unfashionable. In fact, but it's also, it's particularly unfashionable when it comes to this because it amazes me that, you know, you have organisations like the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom and so on, who are absolutely fantastic on a whole load.

of freedom and democracy issues. But when it comes to this freedom of a woman to decide about her own body, suddenly all of that goes a bit out of the window. And I think, or the other thing that happens, is that people think that abortion is some kind of an identity issue. It's like a feminist issue that is about how women define who they are.

And I don't think that that's right at all. I think that, you know, nobody wants to identify as a woman who has had an abortion. You don't support a woman's right. You don't exercise your right to abortion. like this, you don't exercise that right, like you exercise your right to vote. You know, oh, I'm a woman, abortion's illegal. I think I'll have one of those. That's not, you know, that is never the way it works. On an individual level, abortion is the solution to a particular problem. You had sex, you got pregnant, you really do not want to have a baby. But, you know,

it's got such a kind of political ramifications. moral ramifications for the people that the whole thing becomes, you know, a real mess. And my sense is, you know, can we please leave people to make these deeply intimate decisions for themselves and let them take the responsibility for it because ultimately it's her body. And we live in a society that generally now recognises that people should do that. But hang on a second. So on the whole, I agree with the argument. But shouldn't there be limits around when a woman should be able to get abortion? It should be able to get an abortion because, for instance, eight months in, I mean a baby, most babies can live outside of the womb, eight months in. Should that be allowed? Okay. Well, so this is one of the things that used to really do my head in, actually, when I was,

running B-pass because we have a 24-week time limit and I think in lots of ways we could probably say that it's not unreasonable you know 24 weeks

is six months we can accept that by then frankly very very very very few women would be contemplating having an abortion because by that time you can feel fetal movement. You're generally, you know, visibly pregnant. In this country, it's quite easy to get an abortion in early pregnancy.

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Extra Strength, Hannity! Eye drops and work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner by knockout is Padaday. What is a terrible thing, I believe, is when you have that guillotine of dates.

And believe me, this is a seriously practical problem where there will be all kinds of reasons why a woman will present late in pregnancy. And sometimes it's got to do with the fact that a wanted pregnancy has become an unwarranted. pregnancy. Maybe it's because her circumstances have changed. Maybe her relationship has broken down. You know, there are a whole load of things that can go on. Pregnancy always happens within the context of a woman's life. But it seems to me utterly insane, an abortion that is perfectly legal on the Thursday when she's 23 weeks and six days pregnant is utterly illegal on the Friday. So say the doctor's sick. Say something happens like there's a train strike and she can't get to the clinic. If you've got that absolute guillotine of a time limit, it's not like, there's a train strike. It's not

like, you know, it's not like a speeding limit where, oh, you can go a little bit beyond it. It's literally the case that one minute past midnight, a pregnancy that was legal now isn't. And that to me is mind-numbingly stupid. And it's very harsh for women who are on that cusp. And then when it comes to the very late abortions, those ones that I think make everybody draw in a deep breath. You know, it's when you hear of women, and this can really only happen for severe fetal anomaly, and you hear of these very, very late cases. And typically that will have been a managed situation between a woman and her doctor.

and very often there's very late ones are when the baby would be born with some absolutely crippling anomaly that means that it couldn't be kept alive after birth and the woman has said to her medical team that she really wants to carry the pregnancy as long as possible out of love for that unborn child. So it's not someone to start.

And you know what? I actually don't feel like. Yeah, yeah, sure. But can we explore a few more arguments from that I found persuasive with Callum? So it's interesting that we agree that it's killing. And so we can maybe come back to that part of the conversation. But the other thing that he explained was that quite often, and look, my wife is currently eight months pregnant. Yes.

Right. Okay. So you know exactly what it's like then to be eight months pregnant. And one of the things. I mean, not exactly. I know exactly what she's going through. Even if you tell me you're a pregnant woman, I'm not going to believe you. Right, right, exactly.

Well, you're very transphobic. But look, so one of the things that I've observed is that, and my wife would tell you this herself, is that she's gone through various stages, not only physically, but also emotionally and mentally and psychologically. And sometimes she's very, very calm. and other times she's a bit more emotional and a bit all over the place

and this is the process that you go through. And one of the points that Callum made when we interviewed him was that if you look at the statistics of how women feel if they've had an abortion versus carrying the baby, even if they were forced to carry the baby through, is that the statistics show, Callum says, that actually the outcomes are more positive for women who carry the baby through

than the women who have an abortion, right? So my point being that we don't always necessarily know what the right decision is in advance, but the evidence does seem to show that women seem to benefit. They're more likely to better. I mean, these are terrible words. I'm getting myself into awful trouble here. Because it's a really difficult argument. The outcomes are better, statistically speaking, for women who carry the pregnancy through,

even if they didn't want to, versus the women who have an abortion. That's what he argues. Yeah, but where do you get? I mean, that is a, that is a kind of, I think, personally, a slightly wacky way of looking at it. Because once you get into these studies of better outcomes, you end up going all over the place. So, you know, I can tell you that the outcomes of pregnancies that are conceived to women in their early 20s are. are better than the outcomes of pregnancies that are conceived by women at later ages and so on. We wouldn't go around saying, I've a really good idea for everybody to be getting pregnant when they're in their early 20s,

and we shouldn't be letting them get pregnant in later years because the outcomes are better. that really is the road to a very eugenic society where you're basically organising people's behaviour on the thing of outcomes. And the problem is that these studies is very difficult to get comparable groups and I think that it ultimately comes down to a lot. allowing people to make the decision that they think is the right decision for them at the time,

even though sometimes we might look back and we might think that we would have made a different decision with hindsight. I mean, we do that with all kinds of things that we do in our lives. We do that with the people we marry or have children with and so on. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Not very sure it's the right thing to do. Sorry, Frank. Looking back on it. Frank's my husband, by the way.

You know, it's like looking back on things. We're not immune to it. Now, what I can say as a former abortion provider is that, you know, and I know that people who are very against abortion tend to demonise her. and don't entirely believe us when we say this. But the last thing that you want is to end a pregnancy and for someone to regret it. You know, you really do not want that to happen. So there's a massive amount of work that goes on to ensure that women,

particularly with these later procedures, are really in a space where they have considered all of the various options and they're not making a snap decision on it because you do not want to be the doctor who is being hauled up in front of the GMC and accused of not properly ensuring that women have consented and being counseled and so on. And more to the point, you're a decent human being

and you don't want someone to be in a situation. situation like that. So I think that, you know, what I would say to Callum is you can't live people's lives for them. You have to treat women like the adults they are. You have to make sure that they have weighed up all of the options and that they're not making a snap decision. And then you have to make, you have to let them decide. point. And when I said I'm persuaded by his argument, I was not suggesting that that necessarily means we should outlaw all abortions based on the fact that the outcomes are better. But is that something that a woman might be told that, you know, look, you're considering an abortion.

Here is the evidence about how women feel as a result of having an abortion versus carrying the child through. I don't think that you would, well, I don't know. Because wouldn't that be relevant to tell them? Well, I tell you, so I think, right, and I know that this is the way that things go on in, certainly in B-pass clinics, is that the conversation that you will have with somebody, that the counsellors will have with someone, is very nuanced. And when, for example, as you quite often do, you get a younger woman in, who, is basically saying, actually, I really want to have this baby, but my mum will kill me. You're saying, actually, she probably won't, you know.

And let's think about how you might have that discussion with her. Or the person who's saying, you know, I really want to have this baby, I can't cope with this morning sickness anymore. I can't cope with da-da-da-da-da-da. You're talking to them about how they can cope with it. And I think that the, where there's sometimes an imbalance in the sort of issues is the, if you take like the other side, it's not really a two-sided argument. There are some doctors who are absolutely against abortion. and then there are those of us who are providing services

who it's not like you're for abortion it's that you want women to make the right choice and where I really respect Callum is that I think that Callum does really believe that abortion is a bad thing for women what I would say is that having run an abortion service for 17 years, there are very, very few women who will come back and basically say, I really wish I hadn't done that.

The number of women who contact us and say, thank you for enabling me to put my life back on track is huge. Hey, Constantine. Do you believe every business needs cybersecurity to secure? Yes, of course, because otherwise Uncle Vlad will hack the hell out of it. Wouldn't that be a gross violation of international law? In Putin, Russia, we don't have law. Well, if you don't live in Russia, then Pocket Seam is the company for you.

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pocketseam.co.com.com. That's P-O-C-K-E-T-S-I-E-M.com.com.com.com.com.com. co.uk and get your company protected by the best in the business. If you think about the way that the statistics work, I hate talking statistics because I'm rubbish a remembering numbers and something, to be honest, do not ask me tough statistical questions. But if you think that something like one in three women in Britain will have terminated a pregnancy at some time during their life. One in three? Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. I know. I mean, it's true. One in three women will have terminated a pregnancy at some time during their life. And the reason why that happens, by the way, is because contraception, which looks very effective on paper and in studies generally isn't in as effective as you think it will be in real life. So a lot of women who are on the pill or couples using condoms end up with unexpected pregnancies. And abortion is often seen as a, you know, it's like you can call it shutting the gate after the horse is bolted. But fortunately, with pregnancy, we're not talking about bolting horses. and you can put right something that you think is wrong. But, you know, there are not a, it is not the case that there are hundreds of thousands of women

who are mentally damaged as a result of making that decision. I think some women may regret it, as we regret a whole load of things, but mainly it's something that people can put aside and then go on and have children at a time that they wanted. You know, half of the women who come to be passed are already mothers. You know, they've already had children. Many of the other women that we see will go on and have children. It's just at that time it's a problem.

Do you think that we trivialise the issue of abortion? I think it's banded around. I think that we fail to appreciate how women, when they face that positive pregnancy test, have to weigh up some, you know, like a whole load of stuff that is going on in their life. It's like at that point, it really is like you're a fork in the road. And if you decide to terminate the pregnancy, then things go on one track. if you decide to have the baby, your life goes on another track. And often for women, it's very nuanced.

And I'd be the first person to admit that before I became involved in providing abortion services, I thought it was a much more binary, much more simple decision. I thought it was much more women kind of know, you know, if they're going to have an abortion or if they want to have a baby, it's pretty clear one way or the other. And I think now I'd say that's not so much. I think that for most women, there's some grey in there. And what a lot of women will say is if circumstances were different, I have the baby. Now, sometimes that means that people will say, well, what we should do is work on, you know, making better resources for women to be able to continue those pregnancies. And I'm a massive believer in that.

but often the things the women want to change are things that you can't change it's like I would have the baby if I wasn't 16 I would have the baby if my partner wanted to have the baby but how do you change those things you really can't and so again it comes back to weighing it all up all things considered who is going to be in the best position to make that decision

and it you know it has got to be her but is it is it her though see this is like I'm going to sound really illiberal here but from I was born when my mother had been 18 for four days

yeah and I would I wouldn't say I've worked out perfectly, but I've worked out all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you see what I'm saying? Now, fortunately, my mother, my parents made the decision that they made, at least fortunately for me, maybe not for the world, but for me at least, right? Yeah.

But is an 18-year-old really the best person to make that decision? Like, from a right point of view, I agree with you completely. Every human being has a right to make the decision for themselves and make their own mistakes and pay the price of that. Everybody does. But when you're talking about something that involves killing another being, and we've talked about why that's different, I hear you at least. I'm not sure I agree, but I hear you.

Yeah. Is a 17-year-old or a 16-year-old or an 18-year-old really the best person to make that decision? Really? I genuinely really think they are. You know, I know, I've got a good friend. who is a very young mum. And the dad is very young as well. They're both under 18.

Right, but we don't let them vote. We don't let them drink. And yet they can kill another being? Is that what you're telling me? Or put it another way, right? She was able to decide what she felt was going to be the best thing both for her and for a child that she would give birth to. And she decided with, you know, her boyfriend and with very supportive parents, that that was

the best thing. Now, as it happens, I think that we've seen a massive hostility to young mothers and to teenage pregnancy over the last 20 years that I've been working in the field. You know, I think, you know, there has been, well, I mean, it was really under the Blair government where they started this big thing about reducing the rate of teenage pregnancy. And it was a little bit like it was really bad to get pregnant as a teenager. but having a baby as a teenager was even worse than having an abortion. And I'm not sure that that's true for a lot of young girls. There are some of these young girls who are perfectly capable.

As indeed, there are lots of 30-year-old women who are disastrous mothers. It's not, you know, it's not a very age-related thing. I think it does really decide, you know, it does really depend a lot on what you want to be doing with your life at one time. But, you know, look, let me tell you about one. Right, and I'm so not making this up. When I was at B-pass, one of the things that was great about the job

was that you'd go and you'd see one of the clinics and I used to hang out in the waiting room of the clinic because that's a really good place to find out where things are going on. And I remember talking to one woman in the clinic in Brixton who was freaking out because the list was running late and she got to go and collect her toddler from nursery. And she starts explaining to me that the reason why she's having this termination is actually because of her little boy. and the situation is that she'd split up with her little boy's dad. She's got a really good relationship with her little boy's dad.

And this is the crucial thing, the little boy has got a really good relationship with his dad. She's now pregnant by a new boyfriend who she thinks is great fun for her. But she says, unlike her little boy's dad, who is a brilliant dad, she thinks this guy, would be a disastrous father. And she knows that if she has this baby, it's going to severely disrupt the relationship that her existing child has got because it's just going to throw the whole thing out of kilter.

And she said to me, and I, this, you know, there are some things that just stick in your mind. And she's saying, I actually told my current boyfriend if he moved to Australia, I'd probably have this baby, but he's not going to move to Australia and I can't have him in my life and my little boy's life on an ongoing basis in the way that it would be if I had his baby. Those, I mean, talk about the wisdom of Solomon to make these decisions. Those are the kind of tangles that women's lives are like.

It's complex, it's difficult. So it worries me when people and, you know, a lot of the people on the anti-abortion side, you know, are taking highfaluting moral position. That's wrong. This is wrong. You know, sometimes it takes the wisdom of Solomon to make these decisions. Somebody's got to make it. The woman's pregnant.

She's either going to have a baby or she isn't. That is very binary. So who decides? You have to let her make the decision. Francis, before you jump in, can I make one judge a comment? So there is a voice in my head that goes, that's somebody who's managing her relationships by killing somebody else. Like, do we, why is that? Well, you see.

But that's what's happening, isn't it? No, but I can, you see, so the point is, is that if you honestly believe, in your heart of hearts that the embryo, fetus, call it what you will, that human life inside that woman

that doesn't even know it's alive yet, if you think that has the moral equivalence of us or even that woman's little two-year-olds, then there's no answer to what you say. You're obviously

completely right. And there are some people who genuinely, genuinely believe like that. But I actually think that most of us really don't think that. And the way that I look at it is, and I've thought about this. I actually struggled with infertility for a really long time and there was a time when Frank and I were told that we would never have a child

and had kind of come to terms with that and then my son Jacob who you know, you know, kind of is conceived and it was absolutely wonderful. And I

value life in the womb, it disturbs me when people say, oh, it's just like cancer or something like, you know, it's not, you know, it isn't really human life, it's obviously human life. But, and I value it hugely, but I don't give it as much value as say that lady, that last, I was just talking about there's her and there's her son and there's the existing people in their lives who are trying to manage stuff so I give it huge value but not as much value as that do you think the reason that the statistic you quoted one in three women has an abortion is because of the type of society that we live in now where sex is seen as a commodity it's seen as you know something that you can do no strings attached is going to be

no consequences from it the fact that you spoke to me are you spoke to us rather about contraceptions, that is not as effective as we've been led to believe that there's something else that I want to explore. Do you think that is a result of all of these things? So what I think is going on at the moment is that I think that whether you think it's right or whether you think it's wrong, sex in our minds is not linked to reproduction. You don't think when I'm making no assumptions. Well, you clearly said you, you've... I have had sex once.

You have had sex with a woman. Yes. Right, okay. Even with the woman that you are with on an ongoing basis, you do not expect every time you have sex that it's going to result in a child. We have learnt to separate that.

And I think that for most people is even more separate than that. They simply don't expect. They expect to be able to prevent pregnancy. And I think most people, men as well as women, would rather prevent pregnancy. But when pregnancy happens, they, and they haven't wanted it, they expect to be able to put that situation right. And I think abortion is seen as a backstop. And I think that's just the way it is.

and that's very different to the way that things were even when I was young and growing up when I remember going on the pill when I was a teenager and being terrified of the prospect of getting pregnant, absolutely petrified of it and I think that's not the way that young people see things now, whether it's right, whether it's wrong, it is. And we have to cope with that.

And so I don't think the abortion is particularly the problem. I think it's a solution to a number of various different problems the women face. And what's the man's role in all of this, Because I remember a former partner was where we had a discussion, what would happen if we had a child because we weren't in a position to raise it. And she was like, well, I just have an abortion. And I remember thinking, well, obviously that I'm for abortion, but I was thinking, do I not have a saying this?

You know, it's, I mean, it's my child as well. What, at what point? Did you see? I know, no, no, no, no. I know there'll be people out there going, you're a man. No, no, no, no. But it's important. I think it, you know, it is important, or at least put it like this, it's not unimportant.

And I think that most men, you know, are deeply interested in, interested, at least interested, in whether or not they father a, whether or not they father a child. But at the end of the day, when it comes down to making a hard decision, as I said right at the beginning of this discussion, it is a woman's body. And I don't think that a man can decide about that. So I don't think that a man should ever actually legally, they're not in a position to ever say whether a woman can or can't have a, abortion, regardless of their relationship to the pregnancy, and I think legally that's right. But do you know something? When women come into an abortion clinic, usually the guy's there as well.

I mean, they really are. It's usually a decision that they've made together because they're usually in a sexual relationship, you know. And the women who come in on their own. or who haven't discussed it with the guy, are the ones who are not in a relationship with the guy. So, yeah, I think, you know, men matter in this, but they can't have the deciding vote. And do you ever... Pregnancy is not an equal situation.

No, it's not. You know, as my granny would say, a man can always put his hat on and walk away. The woman is literally carrying the consequences. And let's talk about contraception a bit because you touched on that. And that is something that I've never heard and certainly doesn't get told to me by all the adverts, etc, etc., etc. So let's explore that.

Well, you know, so think about it like this. About half of the women that are seen at B-pass. half of them say that they're using a method of contraception at the time that they conceived. Now, you might just say, well, they probably would, wouldn't they? And when it comes to condom use, you know, I think it probably is the case that a fair amount of condom failure is failure to get it out of the packet and on to the right body, part when you're having sex. But there are a massive number of women who come in who are using contraceptive pills and using other methods of contraception that you would expect to be more reliable.

And I think that one of the things is, is that we tend to think about contraception as being unfalible, you know, it's just simply not failing. So, you know, in tests, the contraceptive pill will come up with being, what is it, having a failure rate of half, you know, 0.5, half a percent. But even that, when you think about it, is if you take it according to those scientific statistics, when the contraceptive pill is used absolutely. perfectly, that means that one woman in 200 will become pregnant during a year. Well, if you've got three million using the pill, that is still a lot of women. And if you take it where you think about the pill's effectiveness in real life, where we forget to take it every now and again, or you have a stomach upset or, you know, what have you, well, that's,

a failure rate of about 4%, so that's four women in 100 who will become pregnant. And we just don't think about that. I mean, the point, what I think is ultimately we need to recognize that abortion is, in a way, a form of birth control. And there are a range of methods. of stopping having a child and some of them act before you conceive some of them like

abortion acts after you've conceived but they all at the end of the day wrap up as being a way of stopping a child from being born and I think if we, you know, accept it like that, it probably helps. But, you know, as you say, women don't expect contraception to fail. Men don't expect contraception to fail. So it's hardly surprising that they end up in a B-pass clinic when it does.

Well, that's not what we get fed by society, and it's certainly not what we get fed by advertisers. Well, you know, look, think about it like. this, you know. It wouldn't make for a great advert, though. Buy a condom, you're only going to get pregnant once out of ten times. No, it wouldn't. But, you know, think about it like this, right? You always think your car is going to start in the morning.

And sometimes it doesn't. Is that a metaphor, yeah, you know. You're getting to that kind of thing that's going on. I, I do, you know, I, I, I passed my driving test, right? I passed my driving test. I know the highway code. You know, my company, as B-pass, would have been so delighted when I left and I didn't have a company car anymore.

Because the number of times I managed to back into things getting out of a car park. You know, so contraception is probably about as a reliable as my driving. Let's look at it like that. And would you classify as a morning after pill as a, as an abortion? The morning after pill is definitely a method of contraception legally, right, morally, you can go all over the place with this kind of discussion. Technically, it is a form of abortion, isn't it?

No, because technically, in law, contraception is something that stops a fertilised egg from implanting in the womb. abortion is something that ends a pregnancy and that means it works after. Now the point about, and the reason why it is really important to ram this point home, is that if you're already pregnant and you take the morning after pill, it just doesn't work. So that's why there's an important distinction. although there are some people who say, well, hang on a minute here. And I don't know what Carlin Miller's views were on this or whether you talked about it. But they'll say, well, you know, there's a period of time when an egg has been fertilised,

but it hasn't implanted in the womb yet. And the morning after pill might interfere with that. So if you are really concerned about that, then you might not want to use it. But I think most people are, and certainly legally, which is why abortion in this country, you can only do it in hospitals or licensed clinics. Now you can have the abortion pill at home,

but it still has to be sent out from licensed premises, whereas the morning after pill you can get in your chemist. I'm going to have another pop with the cherry. I'm going to have another go at the chair because... Hey Francis, do you like books? I tried one once. Wasn't for me, Mike. Not enough pictures of fit brand birds.

Never working with you again. But if you like fantasy, check out the Ripples in Reality series by J.S. Powell. They're absolutely brilliant, and they have a five gold star rating on Amazon. I've heard of them. They're beautifully written and completely original. If you want a book that allows you to deal with,

into different worlds and helps you escape the insanity of real life, then ripples in reality is for you. See, I know the word delve, so I do read books. Amazing. Just imagine books written in the style of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Forgottenham, with an added pinch of Stargate. It's catnip for people like me. Virgins.

She started a publishing company named Poppyfield Publishing and her novels are a massive hit with fans who want to read books that are a great read and are not woke. Book one is Shadow Step. And book two, gather shadows. She's currently writing book number three. I can't wait. I don't read books because I can talk to girls.

Your mum doesn't count, mate. And by the way, J.S. Powell is a big supporter of Chicanometry. She is a moderator on our channel and we really appreciate all her help. You can find her books online at Amazon, Lulu.com and other bookseller websites. If you enjoy the books, please leave a review. The links are in the description. This episode is brought to you by Planet Oat Milk. Some people like their coffee hot, some like it, ice cold,

but everyone can agree Planet Oat is made for every cup, delivering the perfect pour, rich, smooth, and delicious every time. Try several varieties, like Planet Oat Boreista-Levers Oat milk. It's great for frothing and steaming and will upgrade your at-home coffee. Whether you're team hot or team iced, discover your favorite oat at Planet Oat.com. I'm going to have another go at the chat. because I was thinking about the example of the Brixton that you gave and you said, well, people, yes, we all accept it's life, but is it the same life as the people who are already alive? But we're not talking about killing those people. We're talking about inconveniencing them or causing some kind of difficulty in their lives or a reduction in their quality of life or the standards of living or problems with their boyfriend or whatever. But if we accept that it's

form of life. Yeah. I don't, I don't see how you can, you can, in any other context, would we ever say, well, you know what, Francis is inconvenience in me and my quality of life's not quite as good, right? There is. You thought it. Yeah, you might have thought of it.

I do feel it, but I've never done it. This is my point. No. And I can see where you're coming from. I'm pro life when it comes to Francis. I can, I'm pro life when it comes to. Francis as well. No, I think that's, you know, I think, you know, but look, there is no comparable situation. Is this really here? Is this really the thing here? This is not going to get resolved.

And that's because you have two conflicting sets of rights that are very, very important that we hold in very high regard, which is independence and bodily autonomy on the one hand and your right to life or another. And these issues are just physiologically in conflict. You can't detach them from each other. We're always going to be in this situation. There is no right. right answer? I think that it is actually like that. There is no halfway house on it. But I think what is an interesting thing here is there, and I don't want to introduce a huge amount of marital discord into your relationship or whatever. But I think that when you say, oh, it's just a matter of inconvenience or it's just a matter of, you know, and it's just an all of this weighed up.

You might want to talk to someone to a woman who is eight months pregnant about what it means to be pregnant, what pregnancy means, what giving birth to a child means, and all of the stuff that goes with it physically and emotionally. and think about whether how, think about how reasonable it is to say to somebody who absolutely does not want that to happen to her to go through that. Hold on, but that isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about the example you gave of the woman in Brixton, who would quite happily have had the baby

if her boyfriend was in another country. So we're not talking about someone who doesn't want to have the baby. We're talking about someone who doesn't want to have the baby because it inconveniences them in terms of their relationships with other people in their life.

Oh, no. I think what I was hearing from that story, and again, I think it comes down to what goes on with this is that what I heard listening to her was that she has a son who has a very important relationship with his father, which would be blown apart if another man is introduced into the mix,

being the father of another child that is introduced into the family. And you're right, it's not the destruction of, the physicality of life. It's not the stopping of a beating heart. But what she was anticipating was the end of life as we know it. It's not an inconvenience. It's not just things being a bit disrupted. It's the end of her family situation. And that is very often what you hear from woman is I cannot cope with having this child, and I'll often refer to, you know, what other people will call a fetus or an embryo, I cannot have this baby and hold my existing family together. And I think that it's all about context and it's all about who decides.

and, you know, how you do it? I mean, if you want to... Let me give you another quick example, may I? I have a friend who was raped. Yeah. And she had the child. Yeah. And she, that massively radicalized her into a pro-life position.

Yeah. And she says, it's not the child's fault. It absolutely isn't the child's fault. It's nothing to... So even if this happened to me and it was awful and all of that, it's not the child's fault. Yeah. So I just, I, look, I am the last person that wants to tell women what to do with their body.

But with that argument, I'm just being honest with you about my instinctive reaction. Yes, it's important for her little boy to have the relationship with his dad, right? But the fact that she is pregnant by someone else is not the fault of the baby that she's carrying. And the fact that that relationship with her former partner may be badly affected and the child that she already has may be badly. It's not the fault of the baby that she's carrying. And yet that baby is the one that is paying the price. For what, let's be honest, without being judgmental, are her decisions.

Yeah, but the thing is, is that somebody, right? Somebody has to make that moral decision and live with it. And I think that, you know, what I'm saying is that I can understand that you or and a whole number of other people might see that that baby inside her that does not even know that it's alive as bit as having a value that. that should disrupt those lives and that's okay. I understand where people come from on that. Do you know, as I said to you, and B-pass now actually is running

an assisted conception service for women who can't become pregnant because it is the really pro-choice organisation. I do not know whether I would end. have been able to face having an abortion myself because I went through a very long period of time when I desperately wanted to be pregnant and I desperately wanted to have a baby and I felt that I couldn't do that. Now, even now, you know, I have what great contemporary philosopher, Ronald Dawkin

describes as being a sense of cosmic awe when I look at an embryo. It is awesome, literally. And to think of ending that and cutting it off seems incredibly profound. But, you know, I'm not going to live with the consequences of that. She is.

And that's why I think we all look at these things. differently. And that's why, you know, the case that I'm really trying to make when I'm writing is these things are nuanced and they're difficult. And there are arguments that you can put for and against and we can discuss it philosophically. But somebody's making a decision. And I have seen women in B-Pass clinics who've said, I never thought I would bring myself to have an abortion. I've had women who have protested outside abortion clinics who, when they have faced that line on the pregnancy test, have suddenly realized that this was not going to work for them. In the same time, I've had women who have been absolutely 100% pro-choice, 100%. They've been on the

marches, they've bought the T-shirt, they've got the sticker. And yet when they've become pregnant, they found that they felt an overwhelming sense of nurturing for that child. And I think in these circumstances, when things are this kind of personal, the best thing that we can do is to accept that there's lots of philosophy going to. on. And, you know, if people looking at the podcast want to, you know, read a copy of the book, there's a lot of it in there. There's a woman called Judith Jarvis Thompson. We talk about, you know, kind of comparable situation. She did this thing that philosophers do of constructing this mind experiment of a violinist who wakes up. And somebody, somebody's attached him to another person, like with an artificial umbilical chord.

And he's basically saying, look, you just have to put up with them for, oh, it's a violinist who's been attached to somebody who you just have to, you know, put up with them for nine months. But you really need to do this because they're a well-famous violinist and I'll die if you don't put up with this inconvenience. And of course, you would never let it happen. And she says, and that's a born person who's a famous violinist. It's not even, you can't even make the argument that it has no sense of itself yet. So you can do all the philosophy.

You can do all of the science. But at the end of the day, it's down to a person to make a decision about something that's going on in their life. And I think we have to have a load of these arguments. But ultimately, they have to make the decision. decision. Do you have sympathy for the pro-life side of the argument and pro-life people? Because frequently in this country, they're mischaracterized, they're seen as being bigoted, hating women. We all know the slurs that get thrown at them. Yeah. Do you know what? I, you know, I think at the moment there is a profound intolerance.

of the questioning of the, um, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, and the legal issues around abortion. And I think that one of the things that troubles me is the, um, abortion is now regarded as a medical procedure that you just kind of can't take anything other than, a kind of almost public health benefit view on and I think it does miss out the fact that there are a lot of moral issues that are around

and that we should constantly be talking about and debating and I made the point earlier I know when I was talking to you that I think that we have to regard it as a method of birth control and I think in a society that wants to allow people full control over who they have a child with

and when they have a baby. Abortion needs to be seen as a method of contraception, but I don't think we should ever forget the points that you're raising about that there is something that seems to be fundamentally morally, different about ending a life to not starting a life. And I think we have to keep that question debated and thought about. Because I actually, you know, I think women think about it. You know, I think, and women will say, you know, I'll have an abortion, if I can have it using that pill and within the first couple of months, but I wouldn't have an abortion after that. So,

So women are thinking about it. We don't lose anything by accepting that. And the demonisation of people who seek to question it is utterly wrong. And one of the things that I really have tried to do when I was writing this book was to think about the discussions that I've had with, people who are against abortion in principle and try and think about how I deal with those arguments and, you know, yeah, you know, so yeah, that's a good point. So, because I think we need to, I think we need to do that on a lot of other things as well, actually. It would have been very

helpful if we could have had some of those discussions about COVID, for example, rather than your pro-vax, your anti-vax, your pro-choice, your anti-choice. We need more of a space where we can consider and have grown-up intelligent discussions, I think. Well, for that reason, it's been a pleasure having you on the show, Anne. Before we ask our questions for our supporters, for our local supporters that they've already asked, and we'll wrap up the interview, we've always got one final question for you, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society?

society that you think we should be. I think what we're not talking about is the M word, the moral word, the whether something is right or whether it's wrong. And I think today being non-judgmental is somehow valorized as a value that we should all accord with. and it seemed to be a very bad thing indeed, ironically, to make judgments about things. And I think we really need to find a way of framing what we think is right and what we think is wrong without the reference to the perhaps the old Christian ideals that used to hold things together.

And I say that's one of the things that I really want to tackle. And loads of people said to me, don't call it the moral case. Call it ethics. Call it something else. And I think we just have to face up to the fact that as people, we need a moral code. and my moral code here is not a judgmental one.

I'm saying it's absolutely right that people should be able to decide on matters of conscience for themselves and on matters of their own bodily integrity for themselves. That's what autonomy is about, and that's what I stand for. That is a fantastic place to end the interview. And if people want to find you online, where is the best place to do that? Other than buying the moral case for abortion, if they want to follow some of the charges.

want to do that, look me up on Twitter. I tweet in my own name. That's probably the best place for them to find me. Why is it that a woman is allowed to forego the responsibilities of being a mother, either by adopting or aborting, but a man cannot do the same?