WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:14.760 I was leading a very happy married life with three young children, when, in the 00:00:14.760 --> 00:00:23.340 early 1960s I had a fourth pregnancy. I was surprised by my depth of my feeling 00:00:23.340 --> 00:00:31.349 that this was something I could not, would not, continue with. I bought an abortion 00:00:31.349 --> 00:00:38.519 in Harley Street, and when I was coming around from the anaesthetic I remembered 00:00:38.519 --> 00:00:44.280 a young woman, in a very similar situation to the one I was then in, who I'd known 00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:50.760 some years before - married, three young children, who had died from a backstreet 00:00:50.760 --> 00:00:58.170 abortion, and I realised that the fact I had a cheque book to wave in Harley Street 00:00:58.170 --> 00:01:05.159 had bought a wife for my husband, a mother for my three young children, whilst 00:01:05.159 --> 00:01:10.740 the other young woman without money had lost her life, left three children 00:01:10.740 --> 00:01:18.329 without a mother and a widower grieving for her. And I vowed, probably as a result 00:01:18.329 --> 00:01:23.719 of the anaesthetic, that I would spend the rest of my life, if needs be, 00:01:23.719 --> 00:01:31.380 campaigning, trying to change that situation, so that all women could have 00:01:31.380 --> 00:01:37.799 what I saw then as the luxury, the privilege, of making a choice about 00:01:37.800 --> 00:01:48.560 whether or not I had a child. That privilege should be available to all women as of a right. 00:01:52.460 --> 00:01:59.580 No woman wants an abortion. To need an abortion is actually not a negation of 00:01:59.590 --> 00:02:05.500 the maternal instinct, as the anti-abortion lobby would tell you, but a 00:02:05.500 --> 00:02:12.820 continuation of it. The woman who is pregnant wants to know that the child 00:02:12.820 --> 00:02:19.750 she will bear will have a good life, that she will be able to care for it. And by 00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:26.860 a good life I don't mean material goods. I mean that it can have love, support, not 00:02:26.860 --> 00:02:34.240 be seen as a nuisance, not wreck the mother's life and ambitions. 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:41.320 That instinctive drive to abortion when the time is not right to bring another 00:02:41.320 --> 00:02:50.260 human being into the world I am convinced is an extension of a mother's concern to be 00:02:50.280 --> 00:02:54.520 able to bring up her offspring and care for them properly. 00:02:58.300 --> 00:03:06.660 No woman is pro-abortion, no woman goes and has sex thinking 'Oh well, I won't use 00:03:06.660 --> 00:03:13.000 a contraceptive because I can always go and get an abortion'. It isn't nice. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:20.770 It isn't easy, it isn't desirable, and I've become very, very cross when I've been 00:03:20.770 --> 00:03:27.940 called 'pro-abortion'. But the words are important and one sees 00:03:27.940 --> 00:03:35.470 how very good the anti-abortion lobby are because early on they found that being 00:03:35.470 --> 00:03:42.120 anti-abortion got them nowhere and they started calling themselves 'pro-life'. 00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:50.700 And that is why I get cross. I am pro-life. I am pro the quality of life. 00:03:50.710 --> 00:04:00.490 Not fitted carpets and central heating, but as I said earlier, pro the capacity for 00:04:00.500 --> 00:04:08.920 a child to be loved, nurtured, treated as an individual, not just as something that 00:04:08.940 --> 00:04:12.420 had to be born because it was decreed it should. 00:04:15.900 --> 00:04:24.500 I sometimes think history, when the population explosion really impacts on 00:04:24.510 --> 00:04:33.180 the whole of humankind, people will look back in horror and incredulity at us 00:04:33.180 --> 00:04:41.820 today forcing women to have children they don't want, can't look after, because 00:04:41.820 --> 00:04:48.420 of something that was written on a bit of paper or decreed thousands of years ago. 00:04:52.080 --> 00:04:57.340 If I had a pound for every time a woman has said to me 'Thank you for what you did, 00:04:57.350 --> 00:05:04.430 I've never had an abortion and I hope I never need one, but I have felt safe to 00:05:04.430 --> 00:05:10.660 continue with my career, with my education, with planning my future, 00:05:10.660 --> 00:05:18.490 knowing that I would be able to fulfill that plan and not have my whole life 00:05:18.490 --> 00:05:28.280 turned upside down, my ambition scuppered by an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy.' 00:05:28.280 --> 00:05:34.420 It has given women freedom and that I really feel quite proud of.