The pro-life movement's disregard for life is grotesque

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/14/abortion-rights-pro-life-movement

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Thankfully, the "culture wars" in Britain have never been as savage as in the US. Hopefully, they never will be. There, Republican politicians feel pressure to stay away from "gay issues", at the very least. Here, a Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson, is eager to distance himself from homophobic adverts on buses. There, Republican politicians to declare themselves "pro-life". Here, Conservative MPs who want to make an issue out of the subject – such as Nadine Dorries – are patronised and demeaned by their leader.

Nevertheless, the constant assault on abortion rights in the US remains alarming. The big idea now is to limit terminations to pregnancies at such an early stage that a foetal heartbeat cannot be detected – at about six weeks. Worse, the wheeze is to insist that this heartbeat must be searched for using a long, electronic vaginal probe – both prohibitively expensive and grotesquely intrusive.

Most ghastly of all is the disregard for the kind of life the child of an unwanted but insisted-upon pregnancy may have. There is a long history of exploitation of children whose adoptions were arranged by the church. It has no right to claim itself a system that has answers. Even the privations visited on a woman forced to give birth pale next to this.

Yet the pro-lifers keep on. It's a wonder they don't just peel women off those foetuses, then throw the women away, like one peels a boiled egg and discards the shell. Then, decides, after all, that one really, really doesn't fancy a boiled egg.