No not this one.

I suppose subjects like abortion are another minefield of social conviction and as a man I would do well to steer clear of it. Pity about that.

The Royal Society of midwives have come out with a statement that abortions should be available to the woman right up until the moment the child is due to be born. 

It throws the whole subject of abortion into the air since it seems to say that it is the woman's "right" (and here we go again on this compulsion we have on "rights") to kill the child she is carrying, irrespective of the child's "right" to be born. 

Hang on say some, the child can't be killed because it only has life when it disconnects itself from the umbilical cord and breathes air unaided. Well no say others, it is life the moment the sperm and the egg start the process of cell division and the chromosomes and genes have their way in deciding which cell belongs to which organ. For convince sake  say others, let say we will class the foetus as having life (what it had before that moment perhaps only God can answer) at an arbitrary age of so many days and that will give some breathing space for the women, who have had an unwanted outcome of their sexually motivated night out and don't want anything  more to do with the business.

Abortion used to be reserved for overcoming abnormality. No one would wish for a baby to be born with a chronic defect and to suffer, but to terminate because the child was not wanted by the mother is a vastly different thing.

A foetus is a part of a woman's body and as such she owns it, is the current argument.

I would argue that the foetus is not part of a woman's body but 'resides' within a woman's body whilst it develops into a baby waiting to be born and the woman has no more ownership than to claim I have ownership of a piece of bacteria or a virus which lives within me.

The case of identifying the status of a foetus viv a vis a baby is crucial of course. We know that the moment of conception, given that everything is healthy, is a pathway which once started is determined and if for convenience we say that up until a certain stage in the development cycle it is not one thing but another then that old evil pragmatism has taken hold and we are in a sorry place.

 Well now the midwives, of all people have joined the fray, the very ones who you would have thought would want to preserve the very thing they serve, along with the interests of the mother, the idea that the health and safety of the baby is paramount are now joining hands with their sisters and proclaiming "choice" is the yardstick which we should all adhere to.

Abortion clinics are terribly sad places. They are not in the business of terminating sick dysfunctional foetus's that is done in the hospital but perfectly health ones, who's only crime is that the mother doesn't want this particular one !!!