Naturally, we all had the
immediate immature reaction to the notion that his name was ‘gooch’. Laugh now,
then continue.
Mr Gooch began by explaining to
us the importance of learning two sides of an argument before we form an
opinion, an ironic statement from a one-sided ‘debate’ in a ‘religious’ school.
The idea of abortion had not yet been mentioned; I found the beginning section
of the PowerPoint dull and pointless. I think we were expecting a little bit
more of a song-and-dance (albeit a preachy one) and a touch more finesse from
the organisation, I was a little disappointed with the mind-numbing
presentation.
I have a passion for all things
political and all thing women, and it would appear that Mr Gooch clearly
doesn’t. I’m not making this a personal attack, I too would be terrified of
standing in front of a crowd delivering a presentation that people are looking
to find fault in. However, Gooch’s pussy-footing around the subject was both
irritating and actually a little demeaning. One of my personal highlights was
when he showed us a newspaper article from his ‘old school’ (Oxford), the
article was on something Pro-Life related. This led to him explain that
‘couples’ never say ‘we’re having a fetus!’ – But I ask you now, who says ‘we’re
aborting our baby’ Mr Gooch? I assume Mr Gooch clearly hadn’t researched the
two sides of his argument.
But then the presentation got
interesting. We were told a story about a 28 year old girl who wanted a car
seat but was offered an abortion from Planned Parenthood in the US. We weren’t
told about the women that Planned Parenthood had helped in other ways, we just
had the idea of PP being a sadistic abortion mill and little else thrust upon
us. Gooch then explained how there were 198,500 abortions performed in 2007.
Cool. Then we were told that told that 90% of disabled children are aborted. A
highly emotive statement to use, the one-sided debate prevails again. The obvious assault factor wasn’t mentioned,
neither the mother’s mental health nor her own physical health.
So, we were then instructed to
sit in groups and discuss what we had witnessed. But there was no passionate
debate, no sudden backlash from the crowd... To be honest, we were all
incredibly bored and Mr Gooch is not a charismatic character. We were all given
a pack on the presentation, an argument offered in the pamphlet was that
abortion is detrimental to a women’s mental and physical health. There were no
statistics offered, no concrete evidence. I looked to our specialist in the
subject – Gooch – to hear some cold, hard facts, asking him how an abortion
mentally damages a women; I think I was expecting a response full of real zeal.
Of course, Gooch had no statistics and just looked uncomfortable.
The question and answer section
was by far the best bit – each question for Gooch was responded by squirming
and skirting round subjects. A certain lack of assertion was missing; Gooch
claimed that an abortion after a rape could sort of be okay because it’s sort
of a bad situation to be in and it’s sort of something that those who haven’t
been through a rape then a pregnancy scare can’t even try to envisage nor
assume an opinion – sort of. Gooch gave a (albeit fuzzy) pro-choice answer.
In stark contrast to what I was
expecting, ‘Life’ had organised a debate that wasn’t a debate and a
presentation that lacked any kind of enthusiasm – apart from a few
controversial statistics. I left the hall with a numb bum and a clearer sense of
my personal belief, they had assured me that it was indeed my choice; all I had
been taught in the 2 hours was that it was ‘my life’ at the end of the day, and
not theirs.
