We could use more Vera Drakes

The film about the 1950s abortion provider raises a lot of issues no one is comfortable talking about, like regret.

by Junius

Mike Leigh's Vera Drake has finished its run but I'd say it is better seen on the box anyway, a black and white TV better still. The Ridge film theatre was all right, especially since it seemed that most of the audience was remembering well the gray late forties in Britain and fully understood the shame that unmarried pregnancy was in that society. This film is half a century late.

Abortion is to many women now merely an annoyance. Or am I wrong? I read somewhere that masses of Soviet women for decades have been using abortions as free contraceptives; but is that to say that they haven't regretted it? In my personal knowledge women who have had abortions do, always do.

So it's an easy slogan to say that women have total right over their own bodies, when there is the stubborn fact that exercising that particular right produces, almost inevitably, regret. I would pose another right: the right to have counsel from someone who has known the regret and is a good advocate against having a termination when it does not terminate the other thing, regret. In other words, every woman has a right to seek an abortion, but also to hear about the other choice.

I think we should move towards a society where there is no such thing as unwanted pregnancy. Vera Drake kept saying that she was only “helping girls out.” The film would have much less impact if the Vera Drakes were a thing of the past. But they should be. Medical abortions must be available on demand to avoid the Vera Drakes or worse. But better still if it just didn't enter anyone's head that they needed to have an abortion, if society was providing enlightened adoption systems or, alternatively, making sure that no child will suffer if the mother wants to keep it.

What burns me up is people talking about banning abortion while giving no thought to how society should welcome the child and mother after the law has forced the birth to occur. Anti-abortionism is implicit socialism. Every anti-abortionist is a socialist. Or a vicious hypocrite: the foetus is saved but the child is left to founder. I would support anti-abortion readily if there were a generous welfare state. I wouldn't ban abortions outright, but the alternative could be made so very much more attractive that abortion would hardly ever be wanted.

An added note on the film: it lacks a final scene. This is how the film should end: Vera Drake is in prison sitting on her bunk and a smile begins to spread on her face and her eyes light up. She has spent her working life as a skivvy in upper-middle class homes, has voluntarily looked after charity cases worse off than herself, and has been a willing slave for her own family. The “helping girls out” has been a very small part of a life totally devoid of personal freedom because it was totally devoted to others. Now she has got three years in jail. What a relief!

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