When I first became a socialist in my late teens, I did so as someone who had already formally broken with Catholicism. I say formally because it was easier to stop doing the rituals than to shake yourself completely free of the ideas that had dominated your formative years.
So that, for instance, even as I was moving towards revolutionary socialism, the question of abortion still produced ambivalent feelings within me.
Rather like those who have nothing against homosexuals 'as long as they don't interfere with me', I supposed grudgingly it was a woman's right to choose, 'as long as no woman aborted a child of mine'.
The first significant shift in this attitude came after I witnessed a debate between pro and anti abortionists. To be honest I can remember very little about the pro abortionists' contribution to the debate, for it was the anti abortionist who really struck me that night.
Probably the thing that shook me more than anything was her attitude to women who had had abortions. Basically she considered them murderers. Their circumstances, their reasons, their beliefs meant nothing to her. That was the turning point, and I have remained a staunch pro choicer ever since. This is despite one more fact that a number of anti abortionists seem to think should put me firmly in their camp: I was born with serious disabilities. For this has perhaps become one of the most emotive weapons in the anti abortionist armoury. It was brought out again recently when a young mother announced she was suing a hospital which misread an ultrasound scan which would have told her that her child had spina bifida. The mother says that had she known this she would have had an abortion.
This has of course produced all the usual responses. Piers Paul Read of the Daily Mail has denounced her as being a product of 1960s and 1970s morality which had given her an 'individualistic and self indulgent approach to life'.
The mother of this child was 19 and the father 20 when she got pregnant. How self indulgent of them to believe they couldn't cope with this responsibility, with watching the child go through many operations, and much pain.
Yet apart from Read, David Alton, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) and all the usual suspects, there has been another more unsettling set of voices, arguing a case that can seem much harder to answerthe voice of disabled people. In the Guardian recently, three letters appeared from people with disabilities explaining why the young mother was wrong.
Each argued that they had lived a good life, and that they wouldn't be here had their parents followed the path of this young mother. Quite so. I too have enjoyed my life as much as anyone I know, and have never wished I'd never been born. But I don't really see where that gets us.
You see, had at least one of my ancestors fled Ireland in the potato famine, I guess I wouldn't be here. Had my grandfather been killed, as so many others were, when he fought alongside the Australians at Gallipoli in the First World War, my fatherand therefore Iwould never have been born. Had my mother married the first real love of her life, or rather had her mother not hounded them apart because he was a Protestant, again I wouldn't be here. And, yes, had the relevant scans been available, and had my mother chosen to have an abortion, I wouldn't be here.
Am I to form all my opinions from these quirks of fate, should my motto be 'never flee a famine, never carry a gun, never marry a Protestant and down with abortion'?
Indeed, the young mother in question explained that due to the extra burden of the young child, she and her partner have halted their plans to have further children. So on the basis of 'if' there are another one, two, three potential children who are not here.
The important point has to be that having a child or not having one is a woman's right. If that woman believes she can bring up a child with a disability, will get the sort of support she needs, will be able to offer the child the time, love and affection it needs, then she has every right to say yes. If she doesn't believe this, then she has every right to say no.
Similarly, if she feels that whatever her economic circumstances, whatever the effect on her relationship with her partner, however it affects her ability to work, she will have a baby (able bodied or otherwise) that is her right. If she feels that for any of these reasons she will have an abortion that is also her right.
One last point. It has been said to me that this is a dangerous road to go down. Didn't Hitler want the extermination of all those with disabilities? Yes he did. But my point is exactly the opposite. The state should not have the right to force people to have babies they do not want, just as it should not have the power to force abortions on people who do not want them.
As for people with disabilities, they should tell the anti abortionists to SPUC OFF.