Editorial | Mr Thwaites and the abortion hearings

This newspaper esteems the intellect of Ronnie Thwaites, as well as the empathy and commitment to social justice he has long brought to his private endeavours and his political and legislative work, in and out of government. So, we believe he has the capacity to demarcate between his personal positions on morality and wider social values, and to prevent their collision when creating public policy for the national good.

But then, there are appearances and perceptions. And the latter, they say, is usually as important as reality. That is why we comment on Mr Thwaites’ chairmanship of Parliament’s Human Resource and Social Development Committee as it holds hearings into Juliet Cuthbert Flynn’s private member’s bill, calling for the legalisation of abortion in Jamaica.

We believe that Mr Thwaites owed it to his fellow committee members, and the wider Jamaica, to have made a statement of his stance on the matter and how he intends to proceed with the chairmanship of the committee.

We expect that all the members of the committee, Mr Thwaites included, will have their views, one way or the other, about abortion, informed by their social and other experiences. But as the chairman, Ronnie Thwaites’ position is not quite the same as the others’. As chairman, he has disproportionate power to influence the structure and tone of the hearings.

Moreover, Mr Thwaites is an ordained deacon of the Roman Catholic Church, who, unless he secretly harbours a contrary position, or otherwise advocates for a change to church canons, is ecclesiastically bound to be against abortion. He probably holds to the notion that life begins at conception.

None of this means that Mr Thwaites can’t be a fair arbiter of the committee’s work, that he ought to recuse himself from the chairmanship, or that he should forfeit his right to attempt to sway his colleagues to his own principles. But in his position, all should be clear where he stands.

This newspaper is certain about our position. On this matter, we stand firmly with Mrs Cuthbert Flynn in favour of the repeal of Sections 72 and 73 of the Offences Against the Person Act – which make it illegal for a woman to procure an abortion in almost any circumstance and also makes a criminal of anyone who helps her so to do – in resisting the fundamentalist right, religious ideologues and other well-meaning right-to-life advocates who would expropriate a woman’s right to the control of her body by attempting to conflate abortion with murder. They, or many, would ascribe personhood to foetuses and embryos and, in the beliefs/mythologies of religion, souls even to zygotes.

Respect is vital

We insist on respect for a woman’s control of her reproductive health, including her absolute right to make decisions about a foetus growing inside her body, up to the point of its scientific viability.

In this regard, Parliament ought to pass, as it should have a long time ago, a Woman’s Right to Pregnancy Act that allows a woman, after appropriate counselling, to terminate within the first three months of pregnancy. Thereafter, termination would be allowed if a physician determined it necessary to preserve the life of the mother.

In many respects, such a law would level the playing field, making available to poor women services that are easily available to richer middle- and upper-class ones, which poor women access mostly in shadowy places and dangerous circumstances.