And if you stick up for yourself on one, you will be misrepresented and insulted
Why, oh why do I continue not just to let myself down but all women? I had to ask myself this after I had a ding–dong with Mehdi Hasan on the Today programme this week over his views on whether you can be "pro-life" and leftwing. Hasan had written an article in the New Statesman in which he laid out a fairly standard anti-abortion stance. I refute the term "pro-life" to describe opposition to abortion, as I am pro-life – the lives of women.
Hasan was then very shocked by the abuse he got on Twitter, and some of it was vile. Comparing him to Jimmy Savile was a little excessive. But his replies felt, to many of us women, arrogant and dismissive. What is for Hasan an interesting philosophical dilemma is actually experienced in reality through our bodies. He also played the emotional card of seeing the scan of his daughter at 20 weeks. I too have seen such scans. Once at 20 weeks I was told the baby was dead and I would just have to wait to miscarry. If all the bits didn't come out they said I would probably be back soon via A&E as I would be infected. So we can all get sentimental over scans. Having also had an ultrasound before an abortion I am in no denial about what that feels like either.
Many others have also in effect rebutted Hasan's views and I admire much of his other writing. So when the Today progamme asked me to debate this with him, I was reluctant. I don't listen to the show because rather like Newsnight at its worst, the "lets have a heated debate" structure is tired and goes nowhere. Plus my last experience of the Today programme was being harangued by John Pilger saying that the women who have made accusations against Julian Assange were probably working for the CIA. Life's too short for Today, I feel.
Really, though, I should have made like Obama and gone to a training camp where they teach you how to debate. But the truth is that the Oxbridgey petty point-scoring, the bland but setup confrontations and lack of honesty is precisely what puts many off politics completely. It certainly does me. Maybe I am never going to learn it; probably because I don't want to?
On this occasion, John Humphrys's was chairing, so I pointed out that here we were on a programme that has a poor record of female participation, with two men and one woman discussing abortion. Humphrys said they had "Sarah [Montague] yesterday"! That's sorted then! I also asked Hasan and Humphries about their reproductive histories and contraceptive methods. I would deduce coitus interruptus. We ended up talking over each other – neither mine or Hasan's finest hour, to be honest. Having had civil exchanges with him since, I am sure we could have had a better discussion in any other situation.
Among many messages of support afterwards, there was also a torrent of abuse. I was shrill, hysterical, hectoring, "a feminist", a disgrace and drunk. Woman, know thy limits. Mainly, I was "disrespectful". This is an interesting take on a discussion about what I may do with the contents of my own womb. Humphrys's famous BBC "impartiality" was on display again this week when he aggressively challenged Harriet Harman over the definition of sexual abuse. This is either hard-hitting interviewing or a dismal and anachronistic attitude given what we now know.
Then came a whole other lot of nastiness as Cristina Odone, with nothing better to do, wrote a blog in the Daily Telegraph saying that I told "the Today audience that men are banned from debating abortion". She also claimed that babies born at 20 weeks can survive. Both these things are untrue. (Borderline viability is usually described as 21 to 25 weeks.) Anyone may disagree with my opinion, but this is remarkably shoddy journalism. Does the Telegraph not check its facts?
Of course men can and do discuss abortion. Men are involved as partners and medics. Indeed, I continue to admire David Steel and his compadres who pushed through the 1967 Abortion Act not to win votes (scarcely imaginable in a politician now) but to stop women dying.
What I would prefer, though, is for women to lead the discussion rather than sit there while men discuss what we are permitted to do. The Today programme, with its adversarial setup, was never going to do that and I should have known better. Of all the things I said, one of the worst was "I am in a van", because you are meant to pretend that you are in a studio, not a radio car. But I found it ludicrously silly that I was indeed in a van being patronised by two guys.
Still, the next time someone has the news not "just in" – the dearth of women on front pages, on discussion panels, on TV and radio, in what passes for political debate – I will simply remind you that to stick up for yourself will involve being misrepresented and nastily insulted. I won't be getting out of bed for such treatment again and, let's face it, I am unlikely to be asked. For not only do I fervently believe in a woman's right to choose but I feel equally strongly about a woman's right to a lie-in.