How often do women have to tell the huge army of busybodies, nosy parkers and interferers to butt out and mind their own business before they actually do so?
A private sexual health and abortion clinic, the Marie Stopes Clinic, has just opened in Belfast. And predictably enough, all the usual anti-abortion, anti-choice factions are protesting against it and trying to close it down.
Too bad if women out there are desperate for an abortion, for all sorts of very good reasons, and believe it's entirely their decision to go ahead.
It's their body, their womb, their embryo, their potential parental responsibility. All the implications are personal ones. All the long-term consequences are personal ones. Yet other people think they have the right to tell them what to do or not to do with the child inside them.
People who justify their offensive interference by citing religion, or respect for life (does that include the mother's life?), or opposing mass murder. Whatever the (dubious) pretext, it apparently entitles them to permanent rights over a woman's womb and whatever is inside it.
Well, here's my advice. Why don't they try looking after their own affairs, which no doubt are far from perfect, and stop poking their self-righteous noses into other people's?
Pic: protest outside the Marie Stopes Clinic
