Freedom is not a matter for debateKate Ausburn

I am pro-choice. I believe that women have complete autonomy over their bodies and it is not the duty of society, state or Cambridge Students for Life to dictate whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, nor is it CSFL's right to claim harmful and false links between pro-choice sentiment and attitudes towards disability. Cambridge Students for Life ignore that most pregnancies involving a disabled fetus are indeed desired pregnancies and that decisions concerning termination are never made lightly or on the back of prejudice.

I therefore think it is extremely shallow for CSFL to organise this debate. I say this as the brother of a sixteen-year-old boy with severe autism. I understand the emotional, financial and physical burdens that caring for a child with disability bring. I also understand that some parents may not be prepared (may never be prepared) to handle such commitments. Though I would never opt to have terminated him or indeed any child of mine with autism, this is the choice I would make for myself, and is not a choice I would have right to make for anyone else. Some parents choose to terminate because they believe it is better for their unborn child – and we must to respect the desires of those parents.

However, there are other problems – more central ones – that I have with this debate. I don’t feel it’s appropriate for a debate on the topic of abortion to be organised by a society that is fundamentally anti-abortion; it defeats the point of a 'debate', as it is likely that CSFL selected both proposition and opposition speakers and invited many of its members to the event. As a medical student, I am also extremely disappointed by Cambridge University’s Medical Society’s choice to co-sponsor the debate. As a medic, I would have thought that the MedSoc would not need to debate that the mother’s wellbeing, her welfare and her will would take priority above all else. If she should choose to terminate, it is the duty of the doctor that she be helped in every possible way throughout that process. MedSoc has no business intervening in a debate on the topic of abortion – it should instead remain militantly pro-choice . That is our duty as medical providers, I remind MedSoc (maybe not in Spain or Ireland but at least in this country). This may be a debate for an interested public but it is almost definitely not a debate for medical students.

I am also made very uncomfortable by the conflation of the two issues of abortion and disability. The real issue in this debate is abortion; disability is just accessory. The motion questions whether mothers should abort fetuses with disabilities, however, if we can agree that we are pro-choice (as most of us do anyway) and agree that mothers have a right to terminate their pregnancies – this right by extent includes all fetuses, disabled or not. The truth is, this debate is still one that is about abortion and abortion only. If the organizers seriously intended on hosting a debate on abortion and disability, they have failed to see what is obvious.

It is from these arguments that I find myself inherently sympathetic to the CUSU Women’s Campaign's protest. I’m sympathetic because, though I may disagree with them sometimes and though I almost always side with discussion and debate over a loud rant outside my college, I don’t feel what happened at Trinity College yesterday was a debate: can you possibly call that a serious exchange of opinion?