Unexpected pregnancy is not a women’s issue alone
This year, for the first time, we mark Unexpected Pregnancy Awareness Week from 8th – 15th March.
Beginning on International Women’s Day and concluding on Mother’s Day, the symbolism is deliberate. Between those two dates lies a profound truth: that the way we support women when pregnancy comes unexpectedly says a great deal about how much we truly value women, and how much we value motherhood.
As a man writing on this subject, I do so with humility. Pregnancy is experienced in a uniquely physical and immediate way by women. It is women who bear the child, and women who often bear the brunt of the social, economic and professional consequences.
But to acknowledge that reality is not to say that this is a “women’s issue” alone. Unexpected pregnancy shapes the lives of men, fathers and families too. It challenges our sense of responsibility, tests our character and exposes the strength -or fragility- of the support structures around us.
What this new Awareness Week seeks to confront is an uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of our culture. We speak constantly about “choice”. Yet too many women facing an unexpected pregnancy describe feeling anything but free.
Financial insecurity, unstable housing, relationship breakdown, mental health struggles and social stigma narrow the field of vision long before any formal decision is made. When a woman says, “I can’t keep it,” we must have the courage to ask: Why not? What has failed around her?
Real choice only exists when real support exists. Life’s (Re)Birth Revolution campaign, which leads this initiative, is not about slogans or political point-scoring. It is about listening: to women, to men, to families, and gathering honest testimony about what is really happening across our country. We hear repeatedly that people feel alone, under pressure and rushed. That is not the mark of a compassionate society.
As Officer of the Pro-Life APPG, I have long believed that supporting women to embrace motherhood -when they wish to do so- is inseparable from reducing the number of abortions in our country. But that support must be practical and tangible, not merely rhetorical. Warm words are no substitute for secure housing, financial stability, accessible counselling, and a community that refuses to stigmatise motherhood.
A rising abortion rate should not be treated as a settled fact of modern life. It ought to prompt serious reflection. It may indicate not empowerment, but abandonment: a society in which continuing a pregnancy is perceived as the hardest and least supported path.
And here is where men must look to ourselves. Too often, when pregnancy is unexpected, men retreat emotionally, physically or financially. Some are overwhelmed; some are afraid; some simply do not know how to respond. But fatherhood, like motherhood, carries responsibility from the very beginning. If we wish to speak credibly about supporting women, we must also speak about calling men to courage, constancy and care.
Unexpected Pregnancy Awareness Week is therefore as much an appeal to fathers as to policymakers and society at large. It asks us to examine the culture we have created and currently inhabit, one in which parenthood is frequently portrayed as a burden to be managed rather than a vocation to be honoured.
There are, indeed, too many barriers to thriving as a parent today. We should not accept a society that causes women to feel afraid when they see a positive pregnancy test.
None of this is about judgement. There are women who experience abortion as loss and carry complex emotions long afterwards. There are families who face pregnancy loss and profound grief.
There are those who choose adoption, and those who continue a pregnancy against daunting odds. In every circumstance, people deserve to be listened to – not steered, shamed or silenced.
If this Awareness Week achieves one thing, I hope it is this: that we begin to see unexpected pregnancy not as a private predicament to be resolved as swiftly as possible, but as a social reality that demands a collective response. International Women’s Day rightly celebrates the achievements and dignity of women.
Mother’s Day honours the gift and sacrifice of motherhood. Between those two milestones, let us resolve to build a culture where no woman (and no man) faces pregnancy or pregnancy loss alone. If we are serious about dignity, about equality, and about life, then we must be serious about support.
Sir Desmond Swayne is the Conservative MP for New Forest West, first elected in 1997, and a former Minister of State at the Department for International Development.
