As 50 years of the Abortion Act approaches, we are looking again at some moving stories of people whose lives have been deeply impacted by abortion.
This is Brian Gault’s story, first published in 2014.
Brian Gault was born without arms as a consequence of his mother taking the drug thalidomide during pregnancy.
Brian, who is from Northern Ireland, shares how fulfilled his life has been having taken on board the advice to, “look to your potential and not your limitation”.
Nervous breakdown
Reflecting on a life in which he has authored the book ‘Look, No Hands!’ and is an in-demand public speaker, Brian Gault has not forgotten the difficulties of his early years.
“It was hard for my mum”, says Brian. “She had a nervous breakdown and at that time she didn’t have any answers – nobody told her why I had no arms.”
After watching a programme in 1993 about children in Brazil affected by thalidomide he wrote his book to raise money to support them.
He and his wife have now been to Brazil six times and have helped well over a hundred families.
Abortion Act
“We’re all special” says Brian. “Although I have a disability, we shouldn’t be valued because of how productive we can be, what we can do. We should be valued for just being who we are.”
He is thankful that the Abortion Act wasn’t in place before he was born, believing he “wouldn’t be sitting here today” if it was.
“What would my mum have done? I’m sure there’d have been a lot of pressure on her to have aborted. I’m so thankful my mum wasn’t put under that pressure.”