“My Foetus”

Julia Black’s father set up the Marie Stopes clinic, which is the UK’s largest abortion provider outside the National Health Service. She grew up with an unquestioning belief in a woman’s freedom of choice, and she herself had an abortion at the age of 21. She was heavily pregnant during the making of this film, in which she challenges her – and our – attitude towards abortion. The film contains images of dismembered foetuses and shows an abortion using the so-called “manual vacuum aspiration” method. The film, like its subject matter, is controversial and emotive, but it would be difficult to question Ms Black’s honesty and integrity, and – as one pro-life activist suggests – is it right that something too awful to be shown on television should be legal?

Reviewed by Rev. Dr. Peter Barnes

In April 2004 British television viewers were able to watch in their lounge rooms the screening on Channel Four of a real abortion – one of the 180,000 that take place each year in the United Kingdom. Now, in Australia, that same privilege – if that is the right word – will be extended to Compass viewers on August 8, 2004. For years some of us have watched people on television being carved up by the surgeon knife, and presumably been edified by it, but the time has apparently come for the public showing of the dismemberment of a seven week old foetus.

The programme, My Foetus, was produced by Julia Black, the daughter of a doctor associated with performing abortions for Marie Stopes International. She thus has impeccable pro-choice credentials. At 21, she had aborted her first child, and so, she says, ‘ignored the life growing inside me.’ A second pregnancy led her to claim that she wanted to face facts, and the result is this production.

In the course of the programme, Julia Black interviewed a woman who was arrested for displaying in public a picture of 21 week-old aborted foetus. Reality TV is one thing; reality politics is quite another. Also, she interviewed an abortionist who claimed that he does it for the baby. He admitted that it is all ‘a bit unpleasant’ and ‘not very nice’, but added that he was convinced that he was doing the right thing, and that there are no problems at all. Euphemisms can deaden the inconvenient proddings of conscience.

In the end, the programme is haunting and disturbing, but profoundly disappointing. Julia Black says that she is repulsed by abortion but not persuaded that it should be banned. She comes to oppose what abortion actually is, yet she remains pro-choice. The actual portion of the programme that shows the abortion is short and muted. It was a little confusing. The abortion is supposed to be of a four week-old foetus – which is much younger than the norm – and then we are shown the dismembered parts of a seven week-old foetus.

The programme makes the point that the abortion debate is full of emotional contradictions, but then proceeds to wallow in its own. If the dismemberment of a seven week-old foetus is the moral equivalent of the removal of an ingrown toenail, then abortion should not upset anybody. If it is not, then the facts have to be really faced. Modern society wants the right to kill babies and not feel guilty about it. Julia Black has opened the window and allowed a little bit of reality into the situation, but is afraid of doing anything more than that. Whether this proves to be the harbinger of a profound moral reassessment of a murderous practice or only a token sacrifice at the altar of honesty remains to be seen. One prays for the former, but suspects the latter.

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