Uplift Magazine

Over Exposure to Tabloids Could Prove Fatal!

By: Sarah Barnes, 06.11.2007 | Comments (0)

I’m glad that the general public don’t believe everything that they read. These past few weeks, I had been rather worried about the media coverage of women’s issues. Still, in the face of adversity, the end of October gave women much cause for celebration.

On October 24th it was announced that the legal time limit for abortion will remain at 24 weeks, rather than being cut to 20. October 26th saw the government announce that from September 2008 girls aged 12-13 will receive a vaccination against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), the virus that causes cervical cancer. Finally, to top off a wonderful week for women, October 27th marked the 40th Anniversary of safe and legal abortion as this was the date that the vote was passed on the 1967 Abortion Act.

The Abortion Act made abortion legal in the UK up to 28 weeks gestation. However, this length was cut to 24 weeks in 1990 and just recently pressure has been applied to bring the limit down to 20 weeks. I celebrated the 40th Anniversary by going to a special screening of Vera Drake followed by a panel discussion. Everyone there agreed that it was important to safeguard women’s individual freedom and moral autonomy in making reproductive choices, but what were the threats against the right to choose? As you’d expect, so called ‘Pro-life’ and religious groups were mentioned, but it was most interesting to hear one national newspaper’s name crop up again and again as perhaps a bigger threat than the rest. Yes, The Daily Mail was the name, but it’s the tabloid press in general that warrants due care and attention.

As we know, there’s nothing tabloids like more than a bit of scandal, and when it comes to abortion rights you can imagine the journalists clamouring to pile onto their high horses. Well, who can blame them? Such emotive issues will always sell papers if warped correctly. It’s here where facts count for little and tall tales take precedence.

“Abortions are used like contraception!” is an alarmist viewpoint often presented by such writers, which is just mad when you consider how invasive, uncomfortable and upsetting abortion can be. No woman would rely on abortion when they could prevent pregnancy through other means. It’s just a fact that no form of currently available contraception is 100% effective. In such circumstances, it is important for the option of abortion to remain if women are to be fully in control of their reproductive health.

The ‘abortion-as-contraception’ argument is often a response to reports of rising abortion levels. Whilst it’s true that there were almost 194,000 terminations in England and Wales last year, almost 4% up on the previous year, we should wonder why more positive reasons for this increase are not given much column space. Reasons such as those put forward by Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, the UK charity providing abortion and contraceptive care. Furedi pointed out that women have easier access to services and that the social climate has changed to one where women no longer feel forced to continue unintended pregnancies, both positive changes that may explain an increase in abortions.

It seems that alarmist phrases must always be accompanied by emotive pictures. For example, an abortion related article in The Metro paper on October 12th was illustrated with what looked like a 6-8 week old foetus. Below it was the caption ‘unborn’, as if this little foetus could just be born, rather than aborted, right at that moment and fend for itself. No mention of how it was being portrayed at about 30 times its actual size. I don’t think it would be too far fetched to imagine that the general public are hazy on how big foetuses are, since images of them are routinely blown up to huge proportions in order to tug on the heartstrings of the red tops readership. In fact, the 3D photography of foetuses in the womb that are used to show their ‘human-ness’ (supposed smiling, waving and crying), which create a groundswell of opinion that abortion is tantamount to murder, are usually taken after the 20 week mark, a time when almost 99% of abortions have already taken place.

Abortions after the 20 week mark are usually carried out because of foetal abnormalities, which can only be detected at this late stage. It is never easy for a woman to decide how to act in this situation. Other late abortions are due to very fragile cases where women might be very young, or have personal or mental problems that mean they might be unable to come to terms with an unwanted pregnancy until that stage. It is these women in particular that need the time limit protecting for them.

However, these fragile women seem the most ridiculed when it comes to tabloid media, presented as silly, lazy women who’ve left it late. One commenter on a Daily Mail message board wrote ‘What’s the point in waiting 24 weeks to have an abortion?…And don’t tell me that at this stage many women don’t even know they are pregnant because it’s quite unlikely.’ Unlikely? In an April 2007 Guardian article (entitled ‘Delay in detecting pregnancy blamed for many late abortions’ no less) Lucy Ward reported on a study by researchers at Southampton and Kent Universities. The study revealed that “well over a third of women (having abortions between the 13th and 24th week) said they had recognised pregnancy late, often because their periods were irregular or because they had been using contraception.” Another point was that “once they had decided to terminate their pregnancy, women acted swiftly to request an abortion, but then 60% reported a delay – often of more than two weeks and in some cases more than three – before actually having the procedure.”

In The Daily Mail (28th October) Melanie Philips wrote ‘Worse still, the Commons committee wants to pave the way for yet more abortions by requiring medical consent from only one doctor rather than the current two – and it also says that nurses should be allowed to perform terminations up to 12 weeks’ gestation.’ This is a typical sentiment of those who want to reduce abortion time limits, and yet stand in the way of any roads that may allow women to gain access to earlier abortions. I must also point out that the aim is that nurses would only be carrying out medical abortions using the pill, not surgical abortions as Philips’ statement may imply.

Despite pressure to cut limits, health minister Dawn Primarolo announced that there is insufficient evidence to justify lowering the 24-week abortion limit. Primarolo took her evidence from the Commons Science and Technology Committee that stated that only 10-15 per cent of babies survive at 23 weeks’ gestation (any time below this is a less than 1 percent chance). Still, The Daily Mirror seemed dissatisfied with this basis of opinion because, whilst covering the story on the 25th of October, they reported ‘Asked for her own opinions, Mrs Primarolo told the Commons Science and Technology Committee “I do not have to discuss my personal views”’ Perhaps The Mirror is suspicious that Primarolo is one of those nasty feminists? The unflattering picture of her that they chose to illustrate the article may support this idea somewhat.

Perhaps even more contemptible than the treatment of abortion rights in the tabloid media has been the coverage of the HPV vaccine. Every year there are around 2,800 cases of cervical cancer in the UK resulting in around 1,000 deaths. The vaccination against HPV could prevent these deaths. Yet, because HPV is contracted through sexual activity, I couldn’t read one article about this amazing advancement for women without a paragraph or two devoted to ‘family organisations’ that objected to the vaccine on ‘moral grounds’ – namely the unfounded (and frankly ludicrous) assumption that girls would become promiscuous due to being safe from cervical cancer.

Tentatively dipping my toe into the comments section on the Daily Mail website I was shocked to see rants like; ‘This is one more example of the Government’s obsession with encouraging children to have sex.’ The mind boggles at what any government would have to gain from under-age sex. Another comment simply stated; ‘Absolutely unacceptable, I’m afraid, as appealing as it may sound … Ban it now.’ Well, I must admit that saving thousands of women’s lives does sound quite appealing, but maybe that’s just me? Thankfully not, as the government found the idea appealing too and decided to pass the bill.

Other people have always wanted to make women’s decisions for them for one reason or another. You might think of these authorities as the government, the religious sectors, or the general public. But there’s no denying that the media is an incredibly powerful tool in shaping the public consciousness. I shudder when I see those huge stacks of Metros shrinking down as they are consumed by commuters. Because the truth is some people won’t look much further to make their ‘informed opinions’.

The awful thing is that, behind the scenes, a newspaper may be neutral on the issues it covers. But when a tabloid has to decide between a pro-abortion or anti-abortion article, there’s no contest when weighing up which story will sell best. An editor knows that stories of miracle babies surviving at 20 weeks will warm hearts and sell papers, unlike tales of the many premature babies born with defects or that do not survive.

We need to be careful about how the information out there shapes peoples ideas, because these ideas can, in turn, shape women’s lives and effectively make women’s decisions for them. It seems that having the tabloid media and their own ‘moral majority’ making decisions on behalf of women could prove fatal. Criminalising abortion will never end abortion, it will only push it underground resulting in life-threatening illegal terminations. Some people thought it acceptable to risk women dieing just so that teenage girls may not venture too early down their sexual path. Is it just me, or does this seem like some sort of twisted punishment?

Women’s own experiences are being overlooked in favour of shock tactics that will sell papers. Thankfully, this great week in October shows that rational thought can triumph, but it is important that we keep an eye on what information people are absorbing. We can counteract media forces by spreading our own message and creating our own media. Our own experiences are our own truth, and no media fabrication can take that away. It’s important that we don’t believe everything that we read, that we seek out more knowledge to better inform ourselves and other people. After all, women’s lives are at stake.