My Foetus Documentary to Screen on ABC

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
12 July 2004

Grief counsellors, priests and pastoral carers are bracing themselves for the forthcoming Channel 4 documentary, My Foetus, due to be broadcast on ABC’s Compass programme next month.

It is already stirring up public controversy. But when it goes to air it will also be a time of silent grief. For whether the abortion industry admits it or not, there are plenty of women out there whose abortions killed not only their children but a little part of themselves.
Till recently those women have often been imprisoned by denial. Not just their own, but a socially imposed silence. Abortion was supposed to be salvation: shame and grief are just irrational; women shouldn’t complain.
But lately a few have been given permission to speak. Melinda Tankard Reist invited some to tell their stories in her harrowing book, Giving Sorrow Words. ‘Elizabeth’, for instance, had an abortion years ago. She describes what followed:

"I was numb, hollow, dead, and so very heavy with sorrow. The feelings didn’t "go with time" as my delighted mother assured me they would. I grew morose, bitter, very sad… I became very different. I’d sleep with almost anyone. I drank heavily. I didn’t care what happened to me and I tried several times to commit suicide. I hated myself and everyone else. I used to dream about the child I’d lost… I wanted my child. I loved it, cherished it, yearned for its birth… Twenty-six years later, I still feel the tragic heaviness of loss. My only consolation is that one day when I die our souls may re-unite."

Such suffering women need to know that they are not alone, not mad. They need the healing and hope that can only come after confronting the truth of abortion. Could this latest film help?
Some years ago I was part of another Channel 4 programme, a panel discussion about the new genetics. I was asked what I thought about prenatal tests which were fast becoming ‘search and destroy’ techniques against the handicapped. Before I could answer, another panellist – who was a notorious embryo experimenter – accused me of thinking all abortion is a sin.

"Of course it’s a sin," piped up a third panellist, Germain Greer. As someone who’d been through the abortion mill and subsequent infertility, she spoke with some authority and passion. She even dared to use the politically incorrect word ‘sin’. Every abortion, she thought, is a sin and women know it in their heart of hearts.
Our society is now so habituated to aborting its young that it has little else to offer women with unplanned pregnancies. We have become so callused by an annual abortion count of 75,000 to 100,000 that we close our eyes to the unborn children destroyed and the women left wounded. And our medical profession has been so corrupted by three decades of this practice that many women find themselves on a treadmill to termination as soon as they enter the consulting room.

My Foetus shows a four-week pregnant woman during a vacuum abortion. As her child dies and is ‘aspirated’ away, the woman says "oh dear." The documentary’s maker, Julia Black, has had an abortion herself, comes from a militant pro-abortion family, and still describes herself as pro-abortion. So nothing is said about the physical or psychological effects of abortion on many women. Or how limited their choices are, especially in the face of physical or emotional abandonment by the very ones who should be supporting them. Or how little care there is for them before or after the ordeal. The whole thing is made to seem quick and easy and over with.
 
One can hardly recommend that people view such a film, or any film that shows real abortion happening or its tragic aftermath. Compass will be showing something that should be unthinkable, unviewable, unshowable. Not because it doesn’t happen, but because we must be very wary of normalising and trivialising something so terrible.
Yet for all its problems the film may bring to the surface for some viewers hard facts they have long preferred not to face. Even Black has since admitted that "when I interviewed a doctor about the unpleasantness of performing late abortions it was difficult to listen and not believe it was morally wrong." Pro-abortion journalist Lauren Booth also recoiled when she saw the film’s pivotal moment. "My hand flew to my mouth in shock," she said. "I swallowed. I didn’t want to say it, but the word ‘murder’ came to my lips."

The modern sciences of foetal photography, ultrasound and genetics are confirming what the Christian Church has taught from time immemorial: that there is a human being present from conception. Even without Christian faith, women have always known this. None seriously talks about ‘my foetus’. Counsellors have long observed that if a woman wants to get rid of it, it’s ‘the foetus’; if she wants to keep it, it’s ‘my baby’.
Talk of ‘my foetus’ reveals the ambivalence of the documentary makers. And of a society which has barely begun to confront the awful truth of what it is doing.

Bishop Anthony Fisher OP is a member of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Family and Life. For referral for women grieving after abortion, contact Marcia Riordan on 03 9412 3373.