New Minister for Women - Maria Caulfield - is pro life.

[ArabellaScott]

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/anger-as-mp-who-suggested-cutting-abortion-time-limit-is-made-minister-for-women/ar-AA13vIjr?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=af0ca7de70284591967a666f2eeebfad

'The Lewes MP has previously come under fire for arguing babies born at as little as 18 weeks “grow up to live long, healthy lives like the rest of us”,'

I thought it was Women & Equalities, has that changed?

WahineToa · Today 15:18
There is no public interest whatsoever in rolling back abortions rights in this country.

Three posts above, and 23 minutes earlier:

gogohmm · Today 14:55
I'm pro choice but feel terminations should be restricted after 14 weeks to those with medical reasons, mother or foetus.

Oh ffs.

Let me clarify for those that require it.

There is no significant or growing public interest in rolling back abortion rights in this country.

One person on MN discussing time limits isn’t a slippery slope to ending abortions.

It will start with reducing the time period for terminations, then move forward once that has been achieved.

No it won’t.

I think this is why the current compromise works, and theres no real campaign on either side to risk changing things.

While we dont have abortion on demand, we do have free and quick services that means the vast majority of terminations are very early, and others are generally for medical reasons.

This means the vast majority of people are happy in that abortions arent late and for 'frivolous' reasons.

Any debate and change to the system risks either women access illegal abortions or the idea that women can demand abortions at 8 months. And those two extremes dont sit right with the public.

Also, the idea its only Conservative MPs that are anti abortion is ridiculous.

Indeed, RobinStrike, and unless I missed it I don't think anyone is saying Tory= automatically anti-woman. (Or that Lab=anti-abortion, or any other permutation).

This post of Minister for Women has existed in various guises for years and been occupied by a number of ministers, many Tory.

We pay attention to the positions taken by all of them, and the choice of this particular Minister is causing some concern.

As said above, worth watching closely.

The current direction in this country in regards to abortion is to make access easier with moves to liberalise the availability of over-the-counter pills for early abortion.

There's a lot of unnecessary scare-mongering, which has started from stating that people who think the time-limit on abortions should be reduced by a few weeks are anti-abortion/pro-life.

well said @ReunitedThorns

There is no scaremongering. We have opponents to abortion who want to reduce the time-limit. We have challenges to abortion on the grounds of disability. We now need buffer zones to keep women safe from harassment as they exercise their right to bodily autonomy.

The TRA movement is not the only global assault on women's rights.

You don’t need to patronise women on this board, we’re all smart enough to be aware of all areas concerning women’s rights and we are also old enough to prioritise them for ourselves without the baseless scaremongering.
The facts are women are safely accessing abortions every day in this country and we have just extended abortion rights. There is no credible threat to our current situation.

Was discussing the other day with my family (who mostly work in medicine), if we reached a point in medial science where a 6 week old foetus could be kept alive outside of the body and was able to grow to full term, would we just ban abortions? The age in which we can keep babies alive from will possibly keep getting lower, so how far would we take it? All hypothetical but quite interesting.

I read a fair bit of the debate on buffer zones. It was part of the Public Order bill.

There were actually various practical concerns about the legislation that I found reasonable.

While I support buffer zones and think no woman should be harassed, forced to walk past people trying to 'pray for her' or anything like that, issues to do with policing, legislative creep, and freedom of speech that were also involved were things that needed to be discussed, and I can see why some might have voted against buffer zones for those reasons.

bills.parliament.uk/bills/3153

accusations of guilt by association are unnecessary.

sadly she is my MP and she is just awful and useless all round and pretty much loathed.

Thank you @WahineToa. Exactly my thoughts.

JK Rowling is an adult woman. she knows that adults can support someone on one issue while strongly disagreeing with them on another. Only the immature think that supporting someone on one issue means you support them on everything.

The age of viability for babies has been pushed down, the age at which such babies can have a good life not so much. It would need quite dramatic scientific changes to get it down to 6 weeks and by then you would probably be able to move to abandoning pregnancy altogether and have incubators instead. So the unhappily pregnant would have alternatives other than abortion - transfer to incubator and adoption. If that ever happens then maybe abortion would be banned but science is not magic, there is no imminent prospect of that.

There are always various practical concerns when it comes to legislating for and protecting women's rights.

It's called Patriarchy.

No, I said stop making it a thing - talk about it if you want. But my point is that if you keep saying women's rights to abortion are under threat (they really are not) then you risk making that a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not a hard concept to understand if you can be bothered. All this upping the rhetoric with hyperbole (in exactly the way you willfully misunderstood what I said, re-wrote in your own words to put a hysterical twist as though I am attacking women for god's sake) is I think potentially seriously damaging to women's rights. And don't paraphrase me again @PerkingFaintly - you bleat about me making people stop talking whilst trying to words into another woman's mouth. Hypocrit.

Thanks @RobinStrike for actual info and @ArabellaScott for nuanced posts considering actual facts.

There's no shortage of hypocrites on this thread. You well up there among them, ChristianXYZ.

But I am not one.

I'm actually flabbergasted. Did you think DARVO was a manual or something? When it's about trans issues, did you think if you stopped making them a thing, then they wouldn't be one? Do you think your alarm about these were a self-fulfilling prophecy? No?

I very much hope Caulfield does not crank things towards a restriction of access to abortion in the UK. But I will apologise to NO ONE for keeping my eye on the ball.

Especially given this is what is happening at the moment in this country.

Just a couple of examples, but basically there's an increase in US funding of anti-abortion activism in the UK now that the US has "got Roe done."

Eg the cleverly named "Alliance for Defending Freedom" now has a UK office and attempted to influence the Scottish bill for buffer zones.
adf.uk/resources/adf-uk-response-to-proposed-abortion-services-safe-access-zone-scotland-bill-consultation/

This is their US website. All cleverly labelled as being about "freedom of expression", but they don't hide that they have a specific position they are working towards on abortion.
[https://adflegal.org/issues/sanctity-of-life]]
Victory! On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Another group, reported on in June this year:
Anti-abortion group operating in Scotland receiving huge US donations
www.thenational.scot/news/20180035.anti-abortion-group-operating-scotland-receiving-huge-us-donations/
A UK-BASED anti-choice group that gives talks to schoolchildren about what it calls “coerced abortion” is receiving thousands of dollars from anonymous American donors.

This was July:
Evangelical anti-abortion push influencing UK position, say activists
www.devex.com/news/evangelical-anti-abortion-push-influencing-uk-position-say-activists-103795
Nongovernmental organizations in the U.K. have been alarmed by a government decision to drop language protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights — or SRHR — from the concluding statement of a July conference on the freedom of religion or belief, organized by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and Fiona Bruce, an evangelical member of the U.K. Parliament who serves as the prime minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief.
Concerns about the U.K.’s faltering position on SRHR are accompanied by worries about the behavior of some U.K. government envoys, whom critics say are essentially unaccountable in the country’s febrile political atmosphere.
[...]
The change in language of the 2022 International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief took place without the knowledge of signatories, angering long-time allies like Sweden and Denmark, according to The Guardian. The move surprised many as the U.K. has long been considered a global leader on SRHR, providing policy and funding support internationally.

WahineToa · 01/11/2022 16:46
You don’t need to patronise women on this board, we’re all smart enough to be aware of all areas concerning women’s rights and we are also old enough to prioritise them for ourselves

Indeed.

So I would thank you to stop patronising those of us for whom keeping an eye on our reproductive rights is quite high on our list of priorities.

So I would thank you to stop patronising those of us for whom keeping an eye on our reproductive rights is quite high on our list of priorities.

Where did I do that? Like I and others have said, keeping an eye on all issues is something we should do. I wasn’t even talking to you actually, I was responding to this:
The TRA movement is not the only global assault on women's rights.

As if this board needs to be told that. Please. But what many don’t agree with is that we need to overreact to this appointment because we are not America, there is no suggestion there are the numbers to support any restrictions on current rights and we have in fact extended them recently.

BTW anyone getting nasty at me, trying to accuse me of shit, or indeed trying to get me to wear some label ("pro-X, anti-Y") so that they can herd me into some position I don't hold ("But you're an X, so you must believe Y", when I don't; usually followed by "If you don't believe Y, then you're not an X... so you must be a Z", when I'm also not) will get absolutely nowhere.

I grew up Catholic. I had to come to my own position about abortion in the face of people who had been in authority over me my whole childhood, who told me women having abortions would go to hell.

I'm really not scared of being yelled on this issue by internet sprites.

Oh actually I should have come back to this thread earlier, as I meant to say thank you to ArabellaScott for her thoughtful and informative posting.

The link to the interview of Caulfield was very interesting.

Particularly the bit where Caulfield says “I was the minister when Northern Ireland legislation came through Westminster to allow abortion,” to associate herself with the legislation – when in truth she had voted against it.

Disingenuous.