A couple of years ago I wrote a short poem called 'Birthday Song.' In essence, it was a celebration of life, best understood as what very easily might have been had things gone to plan.

'Before the Mini-Minor there was me, 
Small and struggling in a foreign place,

My ending almost came before you see,

A clinic, the appointed time, a space

To see me off to nothingness...'

In 1958, my mother was deeply unhappily married and pregnant with her second baby. Realising that this would chain her even more tightly to my father, she arranged for an appointment at an abortion clinic. In those days, abortion was illegal as were the clinics. On the day of the procedure she turned up as planned, sat waiting in a tiny vestibule for her turn, and decided that she couldn't go through with it. And so, here am I.

For years I have struggled with the knowledge that my own story brings to the abortion debate, which in Australia appears to be pretty much settled. Abortion is legal in every state now.

And for years I dutifully bought the line that it was entirely a woman's right to choose and that the tiny blur of foetal material that comprised early pregnancy was largely inconsequential. But part of me knew that this wasn't true. I had hard evidence in my own existence. 

Returning to the church has only strengthened this view. It remains a complicated, emotional and deeply troubling issue. I don't have clear-cut answers. One risks the ire of many in opposing abortion or characterising it as what it really is, murder.

Only if you have survived such a death sentence can you really know.