When Mothers Slay Their Young

Last week's poll was clear cut.

7 of you think we don't come down hard enough on rapists.
2 disagree.

Hmmm. I'm actually surprised we got no votes, but still. I expected a low turnout, but I didn't expect no votes. Still.

Usually these poll topics are presented in the form of I put an issue up and I tell you my point of view. This week will be a little different.

Some of you will be aware I have a strong opinion on this subject and will also be aware that is in part due to personal reasons. I have never told the story in full, because it is, for the most part, something that lingers on in my mind as one of those things I never quite forget and which totally changed my perspective on everything.

So this week, I'm actually just going to tell you my own experience of this topic and how it affected me.

I'm only going to say one thing. The argument that a foetus isn't life because it can't survive on it's own doesn't hold water. Show me a two month old baby who can.

Claire and I were not perhaps, the most ideally suited couple in the world. But we drifted along.
I was 23, she was 24. We were engaged. We lived together. I sold phone systems, she was a college lecturer.
We had little in common, but we muddled along. If anyone cares for more detail, it's here.

Had no spanners ever appeared in the works we'd have ended up walking up that aisle in September of 2002. That's the date she had planned. We'd have ended drifting up to that date and beyond into marital hell.

Why?
For her, because it was her dream. The whole package. The career, the house, the wallpaper, the fitted kitchens, the three piece suite that matches the carpets, the loving huband and the ring on the finger.

For me, strange as it may sound, I thought it was better to settle with what life threw your way than carry on waiting forever. It sounds strange looking back that I was worried about being 'left on the shelf' at that age, but I was.

Underlying it all, wasn't any great desire to tie the knot. I think I saw it as the price that had to be paid. I'm not sure I even saw it as a lifetime arrangement, even if it did end up at the altar.

I think I saw being present at my own wedding as kind of an unpleasant necessity I had to go through in order to be present at the christening of my own children.

A life chosen out of a catalogue, perhaps. But we were choosing from different catalogues.

I'm not sure either of us were really alive.

The problem arose in quite a common way. She was diabetic. They told her her new medication would likely counteract the pill and that she should consider the implant. The thing is, the implant can only go in at a certain time of a woman's cycle (I can't remember whether it's just before or just after her period), and in between her being told this and her next opportunity to have the implant, we went off on our summer holidays...

A week in a cottage in Devon...

Anyway.
I guess everybody remembers where they were when England redeemed itself for thirty years of always losing to Germany by beating Germany 5-1.
I certainly do.

Right from the start the day was- tense. And I didn't quite know why. She kept going on about the town carnival, being an ex carnival Queen herself and I had no interest whatsoever. I was more concerned with working out where I'd watch the game. And where the hell I'd put my England flag.

And we bickered at eachother most of the morning. She wanted me to come watch their floats with her and I wanted to find the flag. Turned out she DID know where it was all along.

Anyway, I agreed to go with her to the carnival and all seemed well, until we were walking down the street and almost got knocked over by a horde of kids armed with plastic guns and pirate hats.
'Bloody kids!' I said 'There should be a law keeping them off the pavements.'
'Well, you better get used to them, DADDY!'

I turned. 'WHAT?'
She growled 'You heard.'

I refused to believe it. She went into all the technicalities of when she thought she'd had her last period. I flatly refused to listen.
'You're not pregnant, Claire. A day or two late at most. Hence your mood.'

It was self deception, of course. I didn't really want to face the prospect. Mainly because I didn't want to be worrying about it when the football was on. So till then, it was better NOT to believe.

Anyway, I kidded myself I didn't believe and it was just another of her crazy short lived self deceptions and forgot about it for the ninety minutes it took England to redeem herself for thirty years of losing to Germany. And for the seven pints I consumed in the pub to celebrate.



By the time I got back to Claire, I think I kind of knew in my heart of hearts. I don't know why.

We found a chemist next day- a Sunday- on the way over to have Dinner with my parents.

We did the test in a cubicle in the Women's public toilets in the local shopping centre.
As I held the strip in the little cup of urine, I could see in my mind the second blue line before it happened. I KNEW. And so did she.

Dinner with my parents was awkward...

We stopped off in a pub in the way home and talked about it. 'I can't keep it.' she said. 'It's the wrong time in my career. And we're not married. In a few years, yes, but not now. We're too young. We can't afford it. I'm not ready for it, and nor are you.'
I just told her not to make rash decisions. I knew my opinion already. But I didn't think it was the right time. She was too shaken, I guess I thought I could work her round into keeping it. So I didn't say much yet, except to tell her not to rush into a decision.

Anyway.
The following day at work, I rolled back in after lunch slightly the worse for wear. I'd told my colleagues in the pub, and they'd agreed I should go home that afternoon and join Claire at the doctors.

So when I got back, I'd had a fair few Double Jamesons.

My boss wasn't impressed. We went for a private talk in the office.

'You're quite drunk.'
'Yes, I know. Thing is, Claire's up the duff and I should really go home. She needs me with her at the doctor's'
'You know, people get pregnant all the time. Welcome to the real world. I was pregnant at fifteen. I'm sure she can cope- it's not like you won't be back home soon.'

Half hour later she called me back in and said 'I've been thinking, I was a bit harsh there. I didn't think. You should go. Go home, if you want.'

But I was weak 'No, it's OK, you're right. I'm needed here. I'll stay.'
'You sure?'
'Yes.'

I should have gone.
Because Claire had already started the wheels in motion.

That month was hell.

Because it kept coming up. I guess I really convinced myself I could talk her out of it.
And so much more came out too, underlying gripes that had festered so long, issues that really showed how little we had in common, how much, underneath it all, we resented eachother in some ways.

I cried several times.

At one time I said 'He's my SON, Claire. And yours too. MY SON. You are making me an accomplice to the murder of MY SON. LITTLE ---. He wants to come with me to watch Birmingham play, not end his life in a plastic bag before it even started.'
And she snarled back 'It's not a he, it's an it. A ball of cells. And it's going to be RIPPED OUT, that's right, ---, RIPPED OUT AND THROWN AWAY!'

And I stared in horror 'What kind of mother are you?'

And I'd say 'How can you think we could marry and have children in the future? What do we say? You had a brother but we killed him. How could we look any future children in the eye, knowing that we killed a child?'

Ans sometimes she really hit me where it hurt 'Typical of you isn't it? You can't even manage sex properly. Never gave me an orgasm, but you managed to get me pregnant. Managed that OK, didn't you? Managed to stick a kid inside me that's no doubt as useless as it's father at everything apart from being a wide boy.'

She wore me down. I did get covert legal advice and found, as most males do, there really is nothing you can do. You really do have absolutely no power at all, your opinion is irrelevant. No one cares. It's her body and it really doesn't matter that it's your son inside.

The day she had to go to the clinic I woke up with a throbbing pain in my shoulder. Burning, it was. All the way to the clinic, I kept massaging it. Eventually as I pushed and pulled the ball of the shoulder, I felt a tight click and a slight twinge. I realised I'd been sleeping so bad, I'd managed to dislocate it and that click was actually my arm slotting back into it's socket.

The Calthorpe Road clinic is a disturbing place. Looks like any other nice house on a nice street. Inside, it could be a Harley Street dentist. But it's not. It's a place where mother's go to divest themselves of their unwanted young.

Killing those two hours was hard. I couldn't focus on my book, so I went for a walk. I got some cigarettes and returned to the clinic. As I came back up the road there were a handful of demonstrators outside, with two security guards blocking the entrance.
As I walked past, one of them flashed a portrait at me. One that he couldn't know would hit me in a way the way it did. Because he couldn't know that I privately shared his position. Not his tactics, not his extremism. But his position. And the image he used was one which holds much power over me.
'Look on the face of the Mother of Christ!'

I returned to the waiting room wanting to run up and stop it. But I knew it was already too late.



They do the women in batches, so they all come back down together. As the first ones came down, one of them came up to me. She must have been told who to look for. 'She's coming, the gas affected her. But you were the first thing she asked for. She's worried about you.'
And I guess for an instant you think it's something you can both come back from. In time, it will heal.

It doesn't.

It never can. It's there. I would look at her and in my heart all I thought was 'Childkiller'.

We lasted a month after that.
And I've never seen her since.

And it changed me. It changed how I saw the society I lived in. Because I could never, ever again, have any respect for when people quoted the law. The law? The law tells me I can't stick Cocaine up my nose of my own free will? Would that be the same law that allows 100,000 unborn children to die every year in the UK alone? One of which was mine? That's how I felt about it.

It was all of it. The women sitting in there in the waiting room, treating it as not much more than a form of contraception. The smiling nurses, the doctors, no doubt justifying it to themselves, but no doubt so did Mengele.

And a society that thinks it's really OK, that it's a 'just a ball of cells'.

Well, that ball of cells carried my DNA. And I don't forget that. I'll never forget that.
To me, it's murder.

Up till then, I had cynically played lip service to the social values of the culture I lived in. Accepted the idea of playing the system, playing ball. This is when it changed for me. This is when it started to get personal.

I give money to two charities.

Dog's Trust.
And SPUC.

I'm not going to present any of the arguments on either side. I don't really care about the issues the Pro-choice camp come up with. It's Murder. It is Murder.

And there is no justification in my view that you can come up with for it. At all.

And I feel that way, because I still grieve. Every time I even see a baby, a part of me remembers.
And always will.

Poll's in the sidebar.

You know the drill.