Abortion rights in the UK - are they at risk?

[LangClegsInSpace]

Inspired by a few posts on another thread I thought it might be useful to have a thread to discuss exactly where we are in the UK with abortion rights and whether, and to what extent, they are at risk.

Also how our rights might be made stronger and the best way to go about that.

My own views:

The overturning of RvW has caused worldwide dismay and outrage. It seems to have also caused a lot of worry among women in the UK because we tend to follow the US in lots of ways.

But when it comes to abortion rights, most of the UK is very different from the US because our rights are written into primary legislation (the Abortion Act) and do not depend on a single legal precedent such as RvW. Our rights cannot be overturned by a judge, they can only be repealed, which is a much lengthier, more difficult process.

The other big difference is that we do not have a powerful religious right wing in most of the UK and views on abortion are a lot less polarised here than in the US. Plenty of conservatives are pro-choice and there are anti-choice MPs in labour and other 'progressive' parties. Issues relating to abortion have always been free votes in westminster, according to conscience. The government has shown no intention of wanting to change abortion law.

So I think abortion rights in most of the UK are reasonably secure.

I know things are different in NI, both in terms of the law and practical access to services. Abortion rights in NI depend on regulations (not primary legislation) which were imposed by Westmister in the absence of a working NI assembly. If Stormont ever gets its act together, these rights might be at considerable risk because there is strong religious anti-choice sentiment from both sides.

There are continuing attacks on abortion rights in the rest of the UK too, through private member's bills and court cases. So far they have repeatedly failed and I expect them to continue failing but we need to keep our eye on the ball.

The most serious current threat is not from the likes of JRM or the DUP. We can already see them, they are known quantities.

The most serious threat I can see today is from those co-opting the disability rights movement.

-Keep an eye on Liam Fox and Lisa Cameron.

-Keep an eye on members of the recently resurrected APPG on Down's Syndrome and all those involved in its secretariat, the Down Syndrome Policy Group.

-Keep an eye on all those who pushed through the weirdly empty Down Syndrome Act.

-Keep an eye on Mencap.

-Keep an eye on anyone who turns up in a parliamentary debate and lies about the Crowter case.

We've been here before, we can all recognise by now institutional capture, policy capture and the pushing forward of a group of people so vulnerable that only an arsehole would tell them 'no'. Today I learned that Heidi Crowter is on the BBC 100 women list. Aside from having DS this woman's major claim to fame is as an anti-choice campaigner.

They still keep losing though, I don't think they're a major threat as long as we keep an eye.

I think the best way to strengthen our rights is to legalise abortion altogether. The current abortion act is just a limited number of exceptions to the general (very old) law that criminalises abortion, with a maximum life sentence.

In NI abortion is decriminalised and (theoretically) available on demand up til 12 weeks. After that, you need two medical practitioners to agree that the pregnancy meets one of a similar set of conditions as in the abortion act.

I like the NZ model, i.e. abortion on demand up to 20 weeks, after 20 weeks, abortion based on a clinical decision, made in consultation with another medic. No criminalisation, no specific set of acceptable reasons. Abortion is regulated in the same way as other healthcare, i.e. in the best interests of the patient (who is the pregnant woman, for the avoidance of doubt).

www.health.govt.nz/our-work/regulation-health-and-disability-system/abortion-services-information-health-practitioners/abortion-legislation

I agree with Maria Miller on the best way of getting there (yes, I know).

hansard.parliament.uk//commons/2022-11-28/debates/629FE1B6-A596-4C54-B764-034455EBDAEF/LegalRightsToAccessAbortion#contribution-FF2CE0FA-3D2D-4C28-9AD2-9D65A7F2921C

We need to fully reform abortion law and properly decriminalise abortion. We should no longer be leaving changes to abortion law for private members bills, amendments to other bills, or to the courts.

It's past time for a proper parlamentary bill to reform and strengthen abortion law and yes this will mean debate and so it will mean we all get to hear lots of opinions we don't like.

I don't believe those opinions in themselves are a threat to abortion rights and I think everyone here can appreciate the dangers of #NoDebate.

This is a lot longer than I intended but I didn't want to pose a 'discuss' question without making my own views known. I am mostly interested in what other women think.

I know things are different in NI, both in terms of the law and practical access to services. Abortion rights in NI depend on regulations (not primary legislation) which were imposed by Westmister in the absence of a working NI assembly.

I think I heard on the news last week that Westminster is going to make them pull their finger out and provide the services that women and girls in NI are now entitled to?

Good idea for a thread, OP.

Just leaving the BPAS page here, which has details of a few current related campaigns:

www.bpas.org/get-involved/campaigns/

In the very long term they are under threat.

A higher than existing proportion of new UK residents have religious/ cultural objections to abortion. These views may change after living here for some time but they may not.

It may become one of the unintended consequences of the patterns of migration we have now.

@ErrolTheDragon that's good news. Just saw this statement about it on BPAS website:

bpas-campaigns.org/news/bpas-comment-on-the-government-announcement-that-full-abortion-services-are-to-be-formally-set-up-in-northern-ireland/

But at the same time, the general UK population are becoming more pro-choice so I think it would take a helluva lot to reverse that.

Figures up to 2016 here:

www.natcen.ac.uk/blog/british-attitudes-to-abortion

And BPAS survey from 2021 here:

www.politicshome.com/news/article/bpas-polling-uk-voters-prochoice-political-spectrum

This was interesting from the first set of figures:

One of the most surprising findings is the increase in support among one of the most traditionally conservative groups. In the past our analysis has found Catholics to be least accepting of abortions compared with other religious groups; which might be expected given that the Catholic Church condemns all forms of abortion. However, between 1985 and 2016 Catholic support for allowing abortion if a women doesn’t want the child almost doubled, from 33% to 61%. This could be down to a general liberalising of attitudes in society as a whole, but could also be linked to Pope Francis’ softer stance on abortion. While there are still differences by religion, this change means Catholics now have views that are more similar to those of the country as whole.

Great idea for a thread. Nothing to add I’m afraid, I’m here to read and learn

Same as Bernard for me. Very valuable and important discussion and chance to share info.
Thanks OP

I think our current laws are pretty good and I wouldn’t want to tinker with them lest they end up worse, but the New Zealand system as described by OP sounds good too. In practice though I wonder if it is different enough to risk changing what we already have… I don’t feel much sense that there are many people wanting changes, only a tiny handful of anti choice protesters. Hopefully it isn’t another ideological import which gets imposed on us from the US. I just don’t think that most people in this country think that women should be forced into motherhood or lose bodily autonomy and life choices. I also think that most of us recognise that we would all like to be born wanted by our mothers (ideally by our fathers too) and in circumstances where our mothers feel well supported and able to care for us.

Yes, I am torn between wanting to change the law to strengthen our rights and letting sleeping dogs lie.

If we keep the law as it is, there will always be occasional private members bills and court cases seeking to change the conditions or time limit because there are conditions and a time limit. I don't expect they will win but it creates anxiety each time.

And I do think the law in NI is a lot more precarious but it's not clear what to do about that as NI MPs already resent being dictated to by Westminster.

But mostly I agree, in practice, I don't think the NZ model would make much difference and I don't think there is any urgent need for change.

Part of the reason I started this thread is that there does seem to be a lot of worry, post RvW. Over 167K people signed a petition demanding that the right to abortion be added to the bill of rights (which seems a strange way to go about things) They were so successful they got a debate, the outcome of which was no change, 'this Government remain committed to ensuring access to safe, regulated abortions'.

But because it was a debate, anti-choice MPs got to air their views and suddenly these contributions are held up as further evidence of our rights being under threat.

I dunno, maybe there's some scaremongering going on. It doesn't hurt to take stock of where we are.

I dunno, maybe there's some scaremongering going on.

It's clear that in the US, a large swathe of political types found it very convenient for abortion rights to be under threat for decades, letting them hang on the Roe v Wade decision. It's a way of controlling women and keeping them "on-side".

I do sense that some want to import that pattern here, and are using the fact that Roe v Wade was reversed as a cue. But here, abortion is secured under law and there is no popular will to unwind it. Sure, there could be more done, but it's not hanging like a thread like it was in the US. And it's certainly not going to vanish if a couple of the wrong people turn up to a KJK rally.

Yes, I came to believe that it suited the Democrat Party to not try and put Roe Vs Wade on a firmer legislative footing, as it meant they could hold the threat of losing abortion rights over women's heads.

Recently I have started wondering whether elements on the left here are trying a similar (obviously not identical) tactic. I do hope I'm wrong.

That would make a lot of sense.

The Republicans would've easily won the midterms, but the abortion issue (in which only 10% of American's are pro-life) was key and as such they performed very badly, and instead of realising that it was abortion that cost them they blamed Trump instead, which means that states and Republican politicians will still go-ahead down the path of criminalising abortion.

Political parties around the world see that criminalising abortion is not a vote winner.

It's not really 'secured under law', though. It's still illegal.

I believe our rights to abortion are secure for now. Also like a pp long term they could well be under threat. Having seen the many attempts to change this most recently the downs syndrome one and how that failed along with all the previous attempts failing, I think we will be ok for some years yet.
So far sanity prevails.

But if the time comes that a credible threat to this comes along, I'll be the first out there to protest and give money if needed for the resistance. I feel very strongly about this because I've had a termination and yes it was horrible and I wish no one ever had to go through with one, but for me at that time it was the right thing.

I dont think politicians of any stripe want the headache that will come with repealing this law. Yet anyway.