I wasn't just watching the film. As My Foetus (to be screened on Channel 4 tonight) unfolded, with its much-publicised images of aborted foetuses, and of an abortion being performed, I was watching myself watching it. How would I react to these images? Would I flinch? Squirm on the sofa? Find half-forgotten memories and images flooding back? After all, like millions of other women, I have been there, on the abortionist's couch, in my time.
And I have never regretted it. The anti-abortionists clearly feel that women mostly don't understand what abortion is and can be shocked into realisation by grisly images of torn foetuses, like a slap across the face. Wrong: we do know what abortion is. I knew. Both eyes were wide open. But I also knew many other things, including my own inability then to bring up a child, the effect of having one on my life at that time, and the likely effect on a child born into a relationship that was not secure. These big and difficult life decisions are complicated - more complicated than a bloody picture.
Julia Black's film is inevitably simplistic, focusing only on the act of abortion at the expense of all the other factors which a woman has to take into account when deciding what to do. Yet it does cross a watershed on British television. A doctor who performs abortions, including some late ones, is admirably frank and unapologetic about what he actually does.
If the aim was to strip away some of the euphemisms around abortion, then it clearly succeeds. The images from America of an aborted foetus aged 21 weeks are graphic, as are the billboard pictures of one aborted at 10 weeks. In both cases, the resemblance to viable babies is obvious, and the torn flesh is witness to the violence involved in the operation - even though by blowing up the images so hugely, there is quite literally a lack of proportion about the pictures.
Technological advance since the 1967 Abortion Act is part of this story: now that it is possible to see 3-D film of actual foetuses in the womb, moving and growing, our ability to confront the reality of abortion is much greater. We knew it before: we can see it now.
The emotional power of almost all the images we see in this debate is ranged against abortion - not just the shock-pictures, but the irresistible sentimentality of the baby pictures which surround them ... those tiny toes and fingers, that love-struck amazement on the new mother's face. These things move us all, and can seem conclusive.
And yet, emotive images are just that, not the last word. It is absolutely right that, because abortion is a solemn thing, not to be used lightly or thoughtlessly, everyone involved should know what actually happens. But they should also know the reality of what bringing up a child involves. It is a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week commitment for years and years.
The other side of the argument is about the life chances of those who are alive, children as well as mothers and fathers too. It is about the awesome hypocrisy of pretending that this story ends happily with a newly born infant, and simply not mentioning the grindingly hard decades to come. It is about liberty - allowing individuals the freedom to make up their own minds about their own lives. Remember, it is the anti-abortionists who want to use state power, to outlaw, to criminalise. It is even, for some people, about a crowded, intensively occupied planet, and the billions of us multiplying all over it. None of these issues have the easy headline-grabbing shock appeal of a torn foetus but all of them are as much a part of the argument.
This film is not, however well meant, a neutral or apolitical act. It comes at a moment when British anti-abortionists are learning lessons from their more aggressive American colleagues, and when the anti-abortion movement is on the move. Anti-abortion sites on the internet are awash with graphic sites and violent language. Comparisons with the Nazi Holocaust have become almost routine. And this too is worrying: the more self-righteous and inflamed the rhetoric, the greater the likelihood of violence. The world already has enough people who think God wants them to go out and kill.
In the US, in the past seven years, there have been well over 300 new measures restricting abortion, including the decision by 32 states to deny free medical help to poor women who need abortions, and by 18 states to force women to delay abortions for 24 hours while they receive state-sponsored anti-abortion propaganda. There is a powerful, well- organised, media-savvy anti-abortion movement spreading from America to Europe and we would be very naive not to remember that when applauding Channel 4 for its "bravery" in showing this film.
That is not an argument for censorship, or hiding our eyes from the reality of abortions, particularly the later ones. But remember that only a tiny proportion of abortions are carried out at a late stage, and then only, as the law states, for strong medical reasons.
Certainly abortion cannot be treated lightly. But if we are going to have an argument, let's have an adult one, not one that stops with the shock pictures. Let us talk about the rights of the living too; and about the importance of being wanted, loved, and cared for. We shouldn't squirm or look away from the reality of abortion. But we shouldn't look away from the awful, ruined lives of children who are unwanted, and mothers who couldn't cope. They may not be cute. But what kind of a world is it, where they are ignored for the rights of the foetus?
