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/

I think I agree with perhaps a slightly modified version of this. I think that it should be a general principle that noone (adult, child or foetus) has the right to physically live off another's body.

You should never be forced to donate an organ, or even blood, to anyone (even if their injury is entirely your fault), noone should have the right to be hooked up to your kidneys as a human dialysis machine(!) even if their kidney damage is your doing, etc. In the same way and for the same reasons I don't think that a woman should ever be forced to sustain and support the life of a foetus using her body, against her will. There's a tendency to wilfully ignore the toll it takes on a woman's body and to treat pregnancy like a neutral waiting period, which it is not. So I think it's a fair analogy.

Where we might differ is that I think I come down to this balance: once a foetus is viable outside of the womb, while the mother should not be forced to continue to carry it, that foetus should be delivered as-is. Basically on the basis that once it can live on its own (without significant artificial intervention) that's when it becomes wrong to terminate. By the same token, that's why it would be wrong to kill an adult, born child etc. It's also consistent with the reasoning re turning off life support machines for adults and children, and why there are no mandatory 'rescuer' laws in this country.

I'm happy to be challenged on that as I'm sure there are things to be picked at but that feels consistent and fair to me.

I disagree. I think the rights of the mother prevail over a featus until the baby is viable and then the mother and baby have equal rights that must be navigated and balanced carefully - if necessary by a legal hearing in front of a judge. It’s not a perfect cut off, it’s blurry. But I think a line is necessary otherwise you have people saying things like a newborn baby that just happens to not be “out” yet is somehow undeserving of even the most basic protections when they could be born safely and live a healthy life whether the mother can/wants to raise them or not.

What is the difference between a late term abortion from pills and infanticide of a just
-born baby when there might be nothing but a day’s difference?

Two years ago a troubled 14 year old killer of her baby, who had given birth all alone after a pregnancy, was charged with murder and sentenced for at least 12 years (not even charged with infanticide as she should have been) and imprisoned. Talk about going after the vulnerable.

But were it now, she could have taken some pills a day or so before and avoided this. That’s what I find hypocritical.

The problem is that I think you have such extreme views that you may struggle to conceptualise why the mainstream will have such a huge problem with the new legislation. It used to be only the ‘pro-life’, right-wing campaign that were seen as extreme and the ‘pro-choice’ campaign was seen to occupy the sensible middle ground. The new legislation has ‘exposed the lie’ as it were and people who would have classed themselves as ‘pro-choice’ will find themselves unable to support a point of view that denies the personhood of an at-term baby.

I totally understand this is your view which you are entitled to, but to the vast majority of people, it will just be too shocking.

But in UK they don't have equal rights. And if you look at countries where foetuses have been given personhood, the result is that women are treated as of less importance than the foetus. There is no balancing.

Women and women's decisions and wants and rights and autonomy over our bodies are not respected as soon as the question is framed as one of competing rights. Women are just not seen as full people.

You only have to look at how society just wholesale gave away women's rights to single sex provision, as soon as a few men were sad and wanted in. And women who needed that were shouted down and called bigots for saying they had needs and wants and rights too. That is also what is happening in places where foetuses are given rights or personhood.

Genuinely, women's rights are too precarious for us to give any quarter. As soon as this is framed as two people with equal rights, women are discounted. The idea that women exist to serve the needs of others is just too close to the surface for this.

I’m struggling to contend with the view that healthy babies at 39 weeks who are not yet born are somehow not worthy of being given a chance at life. I just don’t see that as a mainstream view. It’s a very extreme position to take.

Either late terminations are happening by accident, in which case care should be better and women should not be prosecuted, or they are happening on purpose.

If we want to protect 37 week babies from mothers who don’t wish to be pregnant, we need to allow women to ask for the baby to removed safely.

So either it’s deliberate and women aren’t getting medical treatment they need, or it’s accidental because women are not getting the medical treatment they need. Either way women should not be prosecuted.

@Nameychangington
Foetuses don't have rights. Argue that's wrong if you like but that's the situation

But that's what people are doing. They are arguing that after viability, foetuses should have a right to life and should not be aborted unless under exceptional circumstances, even it that right comes at the expense of the woman. You just don't like that argument. The dehumanising of the unborn has worked well as a tactic for securing abortion rights. But it has its limits. I think you're going to need a better argument than "slippery slope" to justify the termination of foetuses/babies (see how that works?) up to and including term, at home and without medical supervision (if indeed that is what this law allows).

The trouble is that most people don’t think of babies in terms of their legal status. Most people can imagine a baby of 35 weeks and are perfectly aware that it is as human as anyone else. They know that it is a human being just by seeing one.

you can argue that they don’t have the same legal rights as other humans but it doesn’t change the fact you can SEE it is a little person.

So asking people to deny their own experience of a full-term baby as a human (literally not legally) is probably just a step too far. That’s why the debate will come into the mainstream and why people will think the pro-choice movement has lost the moral high-ground

This development doesn’t mean women can rock up for termination in the third trimester. It means that should she lose the baby late on, she won’t be prosecuted.

Like, smoking pot is not legal. But you won’t be prosecuted. It still drives the drug trade, human trafficking, county lines abuse of children and other criminality. But you won’t be prosecuted for it.

Now, apologies if I have got my academic feminists confused, but is Kathleen Stock one of the women who doesn’t like other women disagreeing with her or having their own ideas?

Does part of her distaste for this come from a tendency to want to control the narrative/optics?

I think posterity will think it was a mistake not because of its aims, but because of the discourse which will surround it.

actually what it does is the state will not investigate the circumstances around the most vulnerable women - those trying to access abortions very late on in their pregnancy. The government is basically taking a step back from having any interest in this at all.

furthermore, it will make people question whether they really can support the pro-choice stance, and the pro-life campaign may well gain traction as a result.

You're right, I don't like that argument. Women aren't incubators and our right to bodily autonomy either exists or it doesn't. And illlthat argument is not the law in this country, foetuses don't have a right to life. Women also don't have a right to abort them, and both are how the law is framed in the UK in ways it's not elsewhere.

I think you have misunderstood what this amendment has done though, it hasn't made a law that full term foetuses can be legally aborted. They can't. This is about decriminalising women who have a late miscarriage, or who take abortifacients in the mistaken belief that they are less pregnant than they are, or who take abortifacients when they know they're over the limit. Any woman in the last 2 circumstances has been failed by the care and safety nets which should be there, and any woman in the first had nothing to do with abortion at all. No one wants to birth a dead foetus over 24 weeks, I don't believe any woman chooses that as an easy option, it isn't one.

It's probably just a semantic issue.

I believe (possibly incorrectly?) that "abortion" is simply the medical termination of a pregnancy, and the death of the baby is either an outcome of the fact that the baby cannot exist independently or as a result of the physical processes involved in a surgical abortion.

I feel quite uncomfortable about the direct killing (for want of a better term) of viable babies, but I also feel strongly that no woman should be compelled to use her body to support the life of another human.

I guess I'm just trying out a number of hypothetical positions in my head to try and gauge how people feel about a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy at any stage.

@Peacepleaselouise

I meant to add that I hope your relative had the very best possible outcome. What a horrible situation for her and her family.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

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.