Abortion decriminalisation ‘undermines feminism’ - Kathleen Stock

On this thread, yes, and I have no problem with that.

Did she speak up to support Rosie Duffield when she was harassed? No.

What should matter is the relentless campaign of harassment that SC and her constituency office have experienced from ‘pro-life’ campaigners.
The Spectator had an even worse article which used her motherhood as a reason she shouldn’t have that opinion. It’s all about controlling women into the perfect idea of motherhood.

I thought the Ditum article was fine. I'm not keen on the concept of tone policing, but SC always seems incapable of understanding why anyone would disagree with her, unless they were of evil intent.
Plus she has been hopeless on Gender Issues. I know that shouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it does to me.

Whoah that is a serious hatchet job. It doesn’t make Sarah Ditum look great actually. Creasy only suggested an amendment that wasn’t popular. She’s not committed a crime.

I disagree totally with the idea that abortion law needs to be not touched for safekeeping.
That’s why Northern Irish women had to put up with decades of travel to mainland GB for their abortions- only if they had the means of do so of course. So many people love telling us not to ask for too much lest we upset the apple cart, when it’s women’s issues at stake. I don’t think it’s a tactic that’s serving women well.

I thought this was very good from Sarah Ditum and I agree with it. The furore around this shows we should beware of unintended consequences in what was a largely settled matter.
https://unherd.com/2025/06/stella-creasys-fight-for-relevance/

At the risk of falling into conspiracy theories I struggle to understand what the motivation around this vote was?

Despite the rights and wrongs it looked like a political lose/lose scenario due to how it would be reported.

A handful of vulnerable women aren't typically high on the political agenda?

Natural miscarriages/stillbirths will always happen. Which means dead foetuses in a "viable age" will appear. Sometimes without a clear reason.
Harassing those women is just wrong.

And, every woman have a natural right to eat, drink and treat herself medically as she wishes. It isn't illegal to smoke, drink, take medication not approved for pregnancy or do any other thing which can harm the foetus. Taking medication into her own body isn't a murder.

He should have been charged with child destruction - that is the killing of a child in utero. Why was he not?

Not if they killed their baby. Avoiding questionable investigations isn't a good reason to legalise murder.

There are women who commission babies through surrogacy and don't them up because they have changed their minds or something has changed.

There are women who abuse or neglect their children even when they know it's wrong.

We cant assume that all pregnant women are doing all they can to have a successful pregnancy and outcome.

I find the comments about how vulnerable and desperate the women who go for late abortions are a bit infantilising. Where is the evidence that it's people like this who do it? Could it actually be steely, organised women with the organisational skills to go online, order drugs, take them at the time that suits them? Like Sarah Catt.

The issue is that late term miscarriage/stillbirth is a thing.

And to find the potential late term abortion, you would harass very existing women who haven't done anything wrong, just had the misfortune to lose the baby.

So what's the problem with them being illegal then?

Yep - we aren’t just incubators

Sorry, meant to quote this in my post.

Yes, I do in the sense that I think she has an ethical duty to seek medical care for the baby - the same as she would with any born children she may have. I think she also has an ethical duty to at least pick up a phone and dial 999 if she sees a stranger bleeding out on a pavement or whatever.

I also think a woman has an ethical duty to seek medical care in advance of birth if she can reasonably assume that a live baby will be born and that baby will require medical care - regardless of gestational age or whether the baby is wanted/unwanted.

I don't think she should be compelled to use her body to incubate a baby or to sustain another human life in any way (through bone marrow donation, for example). I also think that her life should be prioritised over the baby's until the point at which it is physically separate from her body - like in cases over severe shoulder dystocia for example, or a theoretical situation in which the baby needs to be born immediately but c-section would be a risk to the mother's health.

These positions are not set in stone. They are where I am at the moment.

I don't think we can say this definitively. It sounds too much like the "it never happens" trans stuff which turned out to actually be happening a fair bit.

There are many reasons why a woman might suddenly decide she doesn't want the baby. Maybe she finds her loving husband in bed with her best friend and suddenly realises she'll be raising the baby alone. Maybe she never wanted it in the first place but was being coerced by an abusive partner - what if she finally escapes him and still doesn't want the baby?

There are many possibilities. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't allow it, just that we shouldn't start telling porkies to try and back up a viewpoint.

A foetus doesn’t have legal personhood though (regardless on whether you say it has rights). The Soho bomber was not charged with the murder of the unborn child who died in his attack because there was no legal person involved.

Yes the Catholic Church does. I am a Catholic. However, there are now several states in the US where this procedure would not be available (or not until you were already really really ill). If people think our protections are safe they need to remember that’s what Americans thought after Roe V Wade and also ‘when America sneezes the UK catches a cold.’

The criminal offence of child destruction still exists where a third party is involved.

Right to access abortion over 24 weeks is still very limited.

The state still has a significant amount of control over a woman’s pregnancy, so I think it might be a bit misleading to view this in terms of whether the foetus does or doesn’t have rights.

Per my post I think I come down on a slightly different place to you but I just wanted to amplify this post because I think you raise a very perceptive point.

I completely agree with the principle that when women's rights are to be 'balanced' with anyone else's, what it really means is that they will be discounted in favour of whoever the other group is and women will be expected - often entirely subconsciously - to silently step aside and pretend they're not suffering.

I agree with this. In either case, the mother needs better support not Parliament waving it on as 'legal' and effectively washing their hands of the problem.

People who are talking about women's rights being sacrosanct over the baby's are missing the point that abortion IS generally illegal over 24 weeks. That's the consensus that people in the UK came to, having considered everything, including the conflict of interests between women's rights and those of the foetus/baby.

This was pretty well accepted and we had no abortion wars here.

So why has this consensus been shattered by a group of mps using a loophole to push through significant change?

Kathleen Stock is entitled to her opinions. I think they are in line with other positions she takes on bodily autonomy. It cant be the case that we expect everyone to believe that more abortion is good. It is perfectly reasonable to question what has happened her and why.

Sepsis would be a legitimate reason for abortion at any stage - or so one would hope. I wouldn't even call that an abortion - it is removal of a child that is unviable and will remain unviable. I understand idiots in Ireland thought it wasn't a good reason some years ago and killed a woman - even the Catholic Church apparently* agrees to abortion in such a case: the child is dead the mother should live.
*I haven't checked but that's my understanding.

Also just thinking about hypothetical positions, do you think the position changes at the point of birth, and that the mother (as defined in UK law) then has an ethical duty to ensure that the baby stays alive?

This is also compelling her to do something, on the basis that she may be the only other person present.