Dear Nadine Dorries...

Hey Nadine,

Like many other women have done, I thought I'd write to you about my uterus this week. If I’m honest I know it’s not going to be riveting. In fact, this might be the tale of just about the most boring uterus ever as far as you’re concerned. After a few painful and unpredictable years working itself out in my teens it does the same thing once a month on a nice regular cycle with no fuss save the usual symptoms. It’s also one of your favourite types of uterus, that is to say one that’s happily ensconced inside the body of a nice, married, Christian woman who “just said no” when she was a teenager and has never “got herself pregnant”. It accompanies me to church every week and together we sit and learn more about Jesus and how we can be more like Him.

This brings me round to an interesting point, Nadine. I believe that part of being a Christian is acting with integrity and genuinely trying to help those in need. As a result, I really worry about the level of care provided by the groups you endorse and hope to see offering counselling to women. I have no problem with optional, impartial, agenda-free counselling which helps women to figure out what’s best for them and feel that ALL organizations offering services probably need to assess where they could do better. But I don’t believe that this is what you want. It worries me that research has shown some of the “help” on offer at counselling centres to be fact-free, manipulative and misleading. And that’s just not Christ-like.

I have never been pregnant. In the future, I would very much like to be, meaning that any pregnancies would in theory be planned for and very wanted, given security by my happy marriage, supportive family and (currently) just-about-enough income. But there are other factors I can’t know about yet – my health, for example – or the health of the foetus. And despite my privilege as a potential incubator of new life, I know that countless women are not in the same situation, and that they have different things to consider. I don’t know what’s best for them – and neither do you. Or the people at LIFE, for that matter.

My uterus may have had an uneventful life so far, but that doesn’t mean we have nothing to say on this issue.

Your sister in Christ (Yes! I went there!),

Hannah  

This post is part of the Dear Nadine Dorries project.