Abortion decriminalisation ‘undermines feminism’ - Kathleen Stock

[IwantToRetire]

The historic vote has divided public opinion, with many welcoming the “hard-won victory” for women, and others warning that it goes too far.

Kathleen Stock, a former philosophy professor at the University of Sussex, who was forced to quit her job following a row with the institution over her views on gender rights and its transgender policy, was among those criticising the ruling.

“Late-term abortions kill babies,” she said. “Viable babies.”

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, she added: “There is no good case for full decriminalisation as voted for today. And there is no genuine political will for it either, because most people haven’t been slowly boiled in a vat of hyperliberal feminism and progressive technocracy like overheating frogs, until they can’t tell which way is up.

“All this will do is further undermine the legitimacy of <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/ThZhc/www.telegraph.co.uk/feminism/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">feminism generally (by association, even if some feminists are actually against it) and also undermine public trust in lawmakers (How could this have been decided so quickly without any proper consultation or discussion of a wide range of views? Why wasn’t it in the manifesto, if it is so important?).”

available in full at https://archive.is/ThZhc

Extracts from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/18/abortion-decriminalisation-undermines-feminism/

surely, thats why they stated they have a lower PERCENTAGE of late term abortions?

Why wouldn’t you revert to pre Covid controls and support for women anyway?

It’s how the medication was designed to be provided.

But this is precisely the point.

The situation that is the policy at the moment is that no one should be deliberately acquiring or facilitating late-stage abortions outside the very limited circumstances where it's already legal (when there are genetic abnormalities incompatible with life). But when a pregnancy ends unexpectedly it might be deliberate (therefore previously criminal) or due to someone's accidental,unintentional or misinformed action (eg in a case where a woman thought she was 10 weeks pg so legal to take abortificant pills, but was actually post-25 weeks, or didn't know she was pg and did something that's inadvisible during pregnancy) or may be due to no human cause and simply be one of the tragedies that happen entirely naturally from time to time.

I disagree strongly that there should be some way of differentiating - any process of differentiating will necessarily be horrifically cruel to a grieving woman who wanted the baby, or to a traumatised woman who didn't want a baby but didn't intentionally do anything wrong. The law change to decriminalise removes the need for this differentiation, allowing each woman to process her trauma without the added trauma of potential criminal investigation. But it deliberately isn't "legalising" and creating a pathway to make it happen.

I don't intrinsically 'trust women' any more than anyone else. I trust people who are willing to discuss the details of difficult cases.

So, the professionals who deal with them?

And I agree with your points. But what about the unintended consequences - a man forcing his partner to take the pills against her will knowing he is now able to evade any scrutiny at all that may previously have taken place? There have been convictions of coercive men doing just this in the past - that will now cease.

This feels like a kneejerk reaction to what's going on in the US - Stella Creasy more or less said so.

And how responsible is it to decriminalise an act which puts a woman's life at risk without any additional safeguards? She can't seek medical help post 24 weeks unless her pregnancy meets certain criteria but she can try and abort her baby legally in her bedroom.

So if you are pro abortion have you been involved in one? All very well saying it. Have you watched a term baby die? Not sure the majority of women take your view, I hope not. Abortion is a deeply personal decision. I am pro choice not my decision to make but I would support a woman who choices to have one. By you saying these “I don’t feel fetal viability is important in the matter” , when you have been involved & held a dying baby then come back to me.

Exactly, why are we alone in this Wild West availability of medication without support?

Do people really want that

I understand that this is the intention, and I think it’s coming from a good place (similarly with the assisted dying legislation) but it also removes any ability to prosecute a woman who deliberately procures medication to abort her baby perhaps very late in pregnancy (and knowingly so). I think that is a bad thing. I think there should be scope to prosecute in a case like that.

I think @EasternStandard has it right to be honest - ensuring proper controls for the medication so it’s prescribed appropriately to women who are at the right stage of pregnancy is a way to safeguard women and prevent those either ignorant of their gestation or wilfully intending to abort later from doing so. We control plenty of drugs for plenty of reasons. If the controls are properly applied, then you could decriminalise ‘seeking’ an abortion at a later stage and rely on medical checks to pick up that it wouldn’t be suitable in that woman’s case. But with easier remote access to these drugs there is always going to be a risk of abuse.

No, the legislators who change the law.

If abortion were just a personal matter it wouldn't be regulated.

I agree with her. This matter should not have been the subject of a two hour debate and then passed. We already allow late term abortions for settled reasons: death of the baby, catastrophic malformation incompatible with life, and also allow early labours in the case of a mother who will/may die if she continues her pregnancy, the hope and intention there being that the baby will also survive albeit maybe needing intensive care. What other reasons can there be for aborting a viable child at 40 weeks i.e. killing it in the womb rather than smothering it once it is born (infanticide)?
This is a technocratic solution to a problem mainly caused by posting abortion pills through the post to mothers who may be unsure of their gestation or who are simply lying because they want an abortion and it is past 24 weeks. That this can happen has made the life of women who have miscarriages or stillbirths the subject of police investigation, and this is wrong. The solution is to stop sending pills out without seeing the patient, not decriminalising aborting a baby at 32+ weeks - a traumatic experience at that stage of pregnancy and a full labour with all its dangers, most likely unsupervised.
Much was made of the law governing abortions being archaic, passed c.150 years ago, when women had few rights. That it is 150 years old does not make it a useless, outdated or restrictive piece of legislation. In this case, quite the reverse.
As Chesterton said, don't pull down a fence until you know why it is there. This decriminalization has made the coercion of women into abortion much simpler and may increase the number of femicidal abortions.
And one of the women pushing this piece of legislation is opposing the Assisted Dying Bill, objecting that it is not getting enough scrutiny. The hypocrisy of that position whilst pushing this piece of legislation is monumental.

Try goggling https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-19621675.amp

I understand that this is the intention, and I think it’s coming from a good place (similarly with the assisted dying legislation) but it also removes any ability to prosecute a woman who deliberately procures medication to abort her baby perhaps very late in pregnancy (and knowingly so). I think that is a bad thing. I think there should be scope to prosecute in a case like that.

I know that I am perhaps labouring a point, but this is what I want to see discussed by legislators. Their argument might well be that this happens so rarely that pragmatically it is better to balance the law in favour of women who unintentionally would fall within the scope of prosecution.

But arguing that women never do this because of some inherent womanly quality raises alarm bells. Stella Creasey also seemed to be hazy on the law and argued that there was scope for prosecution if the action was deliberate.

"What other reasons can there be for aborting a viable child at 40 weeks i.e. killing it in the womb rather than smothering it once it is born."

See above links to Sarah Catt case.

Stella Creasey also seemed to be hazy on the law and argued that there was scope for prosecution if the action was deliberate

A woman could be prosecuted under the Fraud Act 2006 if she lies to get abortion pills.

I agree with the rest of your post though!

ETA: I now think I misunderstood the first paragraph

I too would probably not have made this choice - but I look back at my 20s and 30s and know I was pro-abortion as soon as possible as late as necessary then. One changes. I would now support a woman who chose to have an abortion, hers is not my choice to make. But I do fear that this piece of legislation will make it harder to pick up coercive abortions and may involve maternal injury and death because women are aborting a pregnancy in their own bedrooms.

Full discussion of why we didn’t revert is in the House of Commons library briefing: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9496/CBP-9496.pdf

TLDR; the government originally wanted to return to pre pandemic arrangements, but then medics responded that the new arrangements had enabled earlier abortions with less delays (so a larger proportion happening below six weeks which is good and safer) with no increase in safety incidents compared to the pre pandemic models.
So government changed its mind and made the new version into law in 2022.

and more in BMJ: https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o501

And I agree with your points. But what about the unintended consequences - a man forcing his partner to take the pills against her will knowing he is now able to evade any scrutiny at all that may previously have taken place? There have been convictions of coercive men doing just this in the past - that will now cease.

the decriminalizing is for the woman. If a partner did that, it would still be a criminal offence against him.

I think Grammarnut's point is that the decriminalisation is not needed because any resonable reason to abort a child later on in pregnancy is covered by the law.

Was this discussed in parliament? Is this an intentional safe guard?

Exactly. The issues that were dealt with in the legislation have not just been discussed in the light of yesterday’s vote. The debate around abortion has come up many times in parliament since 1967.
And as for people assuming it’s just an American issue, I wish it were true. There have been several Early Day Motions around reducing access. And there are plenty of campaign groups looking to undermine our access to abortion. As someone who would have died of sepsis without access to surgery it is an emotive point for me.

I'm not sure I know enough about the ins and outs of this to have a fully formed opinion.

On the one hand, I believe in a woman's right to choose.

On the other hand, a fetus past 24 weeks is, as this person says, potentially a viable baby in most cases and I do feel uncomfortable with the idea of people aborting babies at that point. Surely, if they have a chance of surviving without the mother, then they have a right to that?

Having said all that, I'm not sure it should be a criminal issue because I don't think people are going around aborting almost full term babies unless they need help, not criminalisation.

How will that actually happen? There will be no investigation due to this amendment so unless he's being investigated for other reasons, it would go undetected. Of course the woman might report it - but in cases of coercive control, that's highly unlikely.

Thanks for the TLDR part.

It does make us outliers, presumably because even a very low occasion of women going through late term abortions alone is not wanted anywhere else.