One of the questions we get asked at the Minimise Project is how to respond to the so-called “hard cases” when it comes to abortion: cases where a woman is pregnant as a result of rape, or incest, cases where a minor, perhaps a very young minor, is pregnant, or cases where the baby has a life-limiting condition (commonly known as a fatal foetal abnormality) which means the baby is expected to die very shortly after birth if not before. These cases played a central role in abortion debates in Ireland, and continue to feature in abortion debates in Ireland and abroad.

Responding to these cases is not like responding to the main intellectual arguments that crop up in abortion debates: arguments about personhood or bodily rights. This is because these cases do not really present an argument for why abortion is a choice that someone can validly or ethically make, but rather present cases of extreme suffering that can arise when abortion is not available. As such, the cases bypass the question of whether or not abortion is acceptable, and instead focus on how abortion is necessary to alleviate great suffering.

For this reason, there is no set of arguments that we can recommend to use when discussing these hard cases. They are personal, and so they require a personal response. Bearing this in mind, I’m going to present how I have responded in the past, because I seem to have done so without alienating the person I was speaking to. However, this is very much my own approach. I encourage you to try your own approach.

The first thing I try to do when someone presents me with one of these cases is to respond as honestly as I can, with as much empathy as I can. In my case, I have a daughter, and the number one thing that makes me wish I could be pro-choice is imagining how it would feel if she was sexually assaulted and became pregnant as a result. As a mother, I cannot even imagine such a scenario. It genuinely makes me feel sickened with grief even thinking about it. As such, responding to this scenario with empathy is not hard. The honesty part, though, can be harder, because the honest truth is, I don’t think I’d be thinking much, if at all, about my grandchild in that situation. My mind and heart would be completely preoccupied with looking after my own baby, my little girl, facing the worst crisis I can imagine. As a card-carrying pro-lifer, this is hard to admit.

It’s also not hard for me to respond with empathy to stories of babies with life-limiting conditions. My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, over eight years ago, and it affects me to this day. While I’m quite open about it now, most of my memories of that time involve me wanting to curl up in a tiny corner, quiet and private, hiding myself away, and only sharing my grief a little bit at a time, with a few people at a time, as I slowly came to terms with what had happened. I truly cannot imagine what it must feel like to instead know your baby is going to die, but to have everyone know about it, whether you want them to or not. To have what should be a private trauma that you reveal in your own time, if at all, broadcast to the entire world by your own body. It is very hard to honestly share my memories of my miscarriage with people, but I can and have done so, as it helps me demonstrate that I do understand, in some small way, how dreadful and traumatic these events are.

After assuring the person I’m speaking to how much I try to understand and empathise with the pain that these cases inflict, I might tell them something like “I promise I’m going to answer your question about the case you raised. I wonder though if you can give me a bit of space to allow you to properly understand my answer?”. Assuming they say yes, I often give the following analogy:

I was in a physics lecture where we were going to cover the topic of Special Relativity. The lecturer kicked off by saying that we would not be covering General Relativity in the course, because in order to be able to understand it, first he’d need to give us about eighteen lectures on tensor geometry. After telling this story, I then explain that in order for the person I’m talking to to truly understand my answer to the hard case that they raised, they would need to do a bit of work to understand where my answer is coming from, and I ask whether they’d be up for doing that work with me.

Assuming they say yes, my final step is to explain to them that I have a very strange belief – I believe unborn babies aren’t just human beings, and they aren’t just potential or miniature people, but that unborn babies have, in fact, equal rights to adults and children who have already been born. I tell them I’m happy to explain to them, either now or at a future point, why I hold that strange belief (and it is a strange belief: most people don’t actually believe unborn babies are our equals, even if they believe unborn babies are human), but for now all they have to understand is that I really, honestly do hold that strange belief.

At this point, I can invite the other person to think about whether they can see how, if I really do believe unborn babies are equal to us, that abortion is not a choice I can support, even in the very difficult case raised. It’s often a good idea to stress again and again that pro-life people could be wrong about the unborn being our equals – but that if we’re in fact right, then our position makes sense. It might feel like horrible, twisted, cruel, unfeeling sense, perhaps, but sense all the same.

I have never had any luck getting anyone to even begin to rethink their position on abortion using these kinds of techniques, but that has never been my goal. (For what it’s worth, I also don’t think it should be the goal of pro-life people in general to change people’s minds on the “hard cases” unless they first agree on the basic or general case). My goal is only ever to show that I have thought about these cases, that I find them intensely difficult, and that my position on abortion does take these dreadful cases into account. In other words, I don’t simply ignore these cases – or ignore the women and girls who suffer dreadfully in these cases.

I think it’s best to leave it there. Some pro-lifers recommend countering with a pro-choice “hard case” – late term abortion, perhaps, or disability- or sex-selective abortion. I don’t think that’s a great move. I’d rather let the person I’m talking to share their own view, or else let the conversation move on, hoping I’ve made a difference.

Muireann