Section of George Orwell’s novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) by Donald R. McClarey
This section of George Orwell’s novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) indicates how deeply he hated abortion:
Although an agnostic he was an enemy of the dishonest use of euphemisms, but also an ardent foe of abortion.
“But I suppose you want me to marry you, don’t you?”
“Not unless you want to. I’m not going to tie you down. I know it’s against your ideas to marry. You must decide for yourself.”
“But we’ve no alternative — if you’re really going to have this baby.”
“Not necessarily. That’s what you’ve got to decide. Because after all there is another way.“
“What way?”
“Oh, you know. A girl at the studio gave me an address. A friend of hers had it done for only five pounds.”
That pulled him up. For the first time he grasped, with the only kind of knowledge that matters, what they were really talking about. The words “a baby” took on a new significance. They did not mean any longer a mere abstract disaster, they meant a bud of flesh, a bit of himself, down there in her belly, alive and growing. His eyes met hers. They had a strange moment of sympathy such as they had never had before. For a moment he did feel that in some mysterious way they were one flesh. Though they were feet apart, he felt as though they were joined together – as though some invisible living cord stretched from her entrails to his. He knew then that it was a dreadful thing they were contemplating – a blasphemy, if that word had any meaning. Yet if it had been put otherwise he might not have recoiled from it. It was the squalid detail of the five pounds that brought it home.
“No fear!” he said. “Whatever happens we’re not going to do that. It’s disgusting.”
“I know it is. But I can’t have the baby without being married.”
“No! If that’s the alternative I’ll marry you. I’d sooner cut my right hand off than do a thing like that.“
The strong emotional reaction of Orwell’s character, Gordon Comstock, is precisely the way in which any decent human being should view abortion.