Here in the City, the financial heart of London, more money is traded in a week than many countries earn in a year. Only recently, the brokers I-Cap traded over a trillion dollars of derivatives in one week alone. The City is a powerhouse of the global economy and its physical scale reflects its economic magnitude, from the constant noise to the ever-increasing height of the glass structures overhead. It is a physical embodiment of capitalism at its most extreme. In its midst, it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that the City is made up of thousands of individuals, each of whom is someone who works. Pope John Paul II made it clear that the dignity of the person who works is paramount. A human being is not just another resource to be used in the process of wealth-creation.

Day for Life is an opportunity to remind ourselves that all human life has value from the very moment of inception. As the first cause, God communicates life to all beings and holds them in being. Each conception therefore is a physical being called to share in the life of God. It follows that parenthood and family life are to be celebrated.

Human work is one part of this bigger picture. It should be capable of constituting a foundation for family life. For those young professionals who work in the City, far from work being a condition making it possible to found a family, it appears to be becoming a barrier to doing so.

A recent study by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute for Education in London, found that over a third of graduates now in their twenties are likely to be childless by the age of 45. Only for some will childlessness be a conscious choice; others will simply leave it too late, after the pressures of securing their career, buying a house and finding a partner. Even those graduates that do have children are likely to have fewer, and have them later in life.

Life has for a while now been concerned that the particular pressures faced by young people working in the City means that, when they are in a situation of unplanned pregnancy, they feel that they have no other choice but to terminate that pregnancy. The main factors include the high price of housing, with the average now above £200,000. Childcare is also very expensive (over £200 a week for a place at a central London nursery). Whilst starting salaries in the City are above the national average, they are not sufficient to meet this level of expense.

The situation is made worse by a lack of support from City employers. A March 2005 study by the Corporation of London and the Centre for Social and Economic Inclusion found that only 32% of City employers provided some form of financial assistance towards childcare for their staff, and only about 5% had a formal childcare policy. There is also a very real perception that having a child negatively affects women’s career prospects; one respondent to a debate on this issue in Legal Week wrote “At my firm, very few women who have children while still being associates ever make it to partnership” [1]. Whilst the pressures of work affect all would-be parents, for those who have sacrificed many years of study (with the associated burden of student debt) and who may themselves feel a weight of parental expectation on their own shoulders, such considerations are particularly pressing. The long-hours culture of the City is another obstacle; twelve-hour days are common, and I have heard of one woman who did not leave her office before midnight for over a month.

What help is there for such people who find either themselves or their partner unexpectedly pregnant? Family support is often unavailable, as families are not based in London or in many cases not even in the UK. As they are in full-time employment, they are not eligible to receive help from the State. Those charities offering practical support to those in what are termed crisis pregnancy situations are usually part-funded by the government. The conditions imposed by such funding means that their help too is often limited to those who are already in receipt of benefit. Young professionals fall through a gap; too wealthy to receive state or charitable support, yet not wealthy enough to be able to bear the costs of bringing up a child under the present conditions.

Many professional women already come to Life’s London care-centres for post-abortion counselling, suffering from post-abortion trauma. We are seeking to understand what kind of practical support this group of people would need in order to feel able to continue their pregnancies, and to fill the gap in charitable support that we have identified. As part of this process, we are seeking testimonials, in confidence, from those who have been through this experience, whatever choice they made.

Life's ethos over the years has been to provide alternatives to abortion in a way that responds to the needs of a changing society. Although Life is now responding to the most recent trends identified, its core principle remains the same: no one should feel forced, through economic circumstance, to abort their child.

[1] Legal Week, 9 November 2006

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