Here’s another piece which highlights our need to normalise sex — and specifically sex education and the discussion of sexuality. George Monbiot (yes I know not all of you like the guy, but at least his controversial opinions are based on published data) points out in the Guardian (13 January) that …

[T]here is no association between [abortion’s] legality and its incidence. In other words, banning abortion does not stop the practice; it merely makes it more dangerous.
… once you grasp the fact that legalising women’s reproductive rights does not raise the incidence of abortions, only one issue remains to be debated: should they be legal and safe or illegal and dangerous? …
There might be no causal relationship between reproductive choice and the incidence of abortion, but there is a strong correlation: an inverse one. As the Lancet‘s most recent survey of global rates and trends notes: “The abortion rate was lower … where more women live under liberal abortion laws”.
… laws restricting abortion tend to be most prevalent where contraception and comprehensive sex education are hard to obtain, and when sex and childbirth outside marriage are anathematised.
Young people have sex, whatever their elders say — they always have, and always will. Those with the least information and the least access to birth control are the most likely to suffer unintended pregnancies. And what greater incentive could there be for terminating a pregnancy than a culture in which reproduction out of wedlock is a mortal sin?

No-one is suggesting abortion is easy; even when legal it is too often a traumatic experience, mentally and/or physically. But women should have the right to choose. Their bodies; their choice. Isn’t it immoral to deny people this simple human right?
But yes, it would be so much better if we had much more open attitudes to sex, sexuality and sex education; with the promotion of effective contraception. That way there would be a much reduced need for abortions in the first place.