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It is worth contemplating why senior Tory politicians are queuing up to attack women's reproductive rights. First there was equalities minister Maria Miller, then Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, now Home Secretary Theresa May.
Their opinions on the time limits for abortions obviously have no basis in medical fact. The people best placed to know whether there is any scientific case for lowering time limits are doctors, specifically doctors that specialise in women and childbirth. But their representative body, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, has dismissed the need for lowering time limits out of hand. They argue that there is little sustainable evidence that the survival rates for babies born under 24 weeks have improved in any meaningful way. So there is no medical basis for what these Tories are saying.
We can also dismiss any notion that the Tory politicians, wading into the debate about abortion time limits, are concerned about the life chances of the unborn children. If the Coalition really cared about the life chances of children, unborn or otherwise, they would not be pursuing their current economic policies and welfare cuts. Whether it is cuts in support for breast feeding or slashing the Sure Start program, Coalition policy will make the lives of women and children that much harder.
The timing is the clue. Miller, Hunt, May et al have all chosen to talk about women's reproductive rights on the eve of Tory Party conference. This is about politics not medicine. These statements are a deliberate attempt to appeal to that wing of the Tory right which is obsessed with rolling back women's rights over their own bodies.
Those Tory right wingers like the idea of lowering time limits, because they believe it will bring down the number of abortions. Anti-abortion dogmatists know they can't win a straight fight on a woman's right to choose. So they are choosing to constrain women's rights by a "salami slicing" approach. Whether it is insisting on extra counselling for women seeking abortion (women already get counselling as a matter of course) or bringing down time limits, the idea is to gradually circumscribe women's rights. The Tory Christian right in parliament is persistent and well funded.
They represent a voting bloc that no ambitious Tory minister can afford to ignore. It will not have escaped Jeremy Hunt's attention that by appealing to his own right-wing on an issue like abortion, it buttresses his still shaky position. Despite Cameron's gesture of faith in him by making him health secretary at all, Hunt still needs all the friends he can get. Who knows what Leveson may bring. Hunt must realise that he cannot, in practise, bring the time limit down to 12 weeks. But he must calculate that it all creates pressure to bring down time limits at least as far as 20. He must also know the kudos it will bring him in right wing Tory circles by being seen to lead that fight.
Women's reproductive rights present a range of issues that need to be dealt with calmly, objectively and on the basis of the available medical evidence. Instead leading Tories are jumping into the debate on the basis of their own subjective views. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has called the Health Secretary's intervention 'insulting to women'. It is more than that.
Leading Tory politicians are intervening in a difficult issue, with no regard for medical opinion, for the crudest of political motives. Britain does not need a toxic American-style politicised debate on abortion with politicians trying to outdo each other in appeals to the religious right. Women deserve better. "
Follow Diane Abbott on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hackneyabbott
I share Ms. Abbott's outrage and see this 'opinion' as the first stumbling step to introduce the rabid neoconagenda favoured by the likes of Hunt; the gradual erosion of womens' rights.
And Mr. Hunt should also realised that simply restricting the timescale doesn't make abortion go away; it merely transfers it to the backstreets from where it was effectively rescued by the enlightened AoP in 1967..
Before that time, women faced with this situation for whatever reason, had stark choices; either have an unwanted child she couldn't support, self-abort or go to a backstreet abortionist instead... not very good choices, are they..??
I'm a thinking man and support unreservedly a woman's right to chose what happens to and with her body - women with or without their partners should decide whatever course of action they deem to be correct for their individual circumstances, with our support and with authorised medical procedures available.
Anything else condems women and their existing families to no choice at all...
Well said and good luck, Ms. Abbott
What have you, Diane Abbott, done to address the number of repeat abortions in this country, or do you not see some very serious problem with 21 year olds already having had 5 abortions? Or sex-selective abortions which are becoming more and more common? Or that 98% of all abortions are purely a matter of choice, and not of need (health of the mother, birth defects, rape or incest)? In addition, we have the highest number of teen mothers in Europe, with children as young as 13 giving birth and 37 year old grandmothers. We have so much child abuse and neglect and so many little ones in care who still receive visits from their mothers who say, "I am not mentally equipped to deal with 'it'", and very often this boils down to drug and/or alcohol abuse or not wanting to upset the latest boyfriend.
There is something terribly, terribly wrong. This is not a political issue, it is a societal issue, and one which must be addressed by us women. No politics or political correctness - this is about children (born and unborn) being treated as burdens or meal tickets (sometimes both) and women disrespecting themselves and allowing men to disrespect them and their children.
OTOH there's more than a sniff of hypocrisy here as Abbott makes of it just what she accuses the others of making -- political capital. Her own party would be in just as bad or worse financial straits as the coalition and making just as many cuts. Thank goodness someone will stand up for women's rights and common sense, but don't pretend labour is any better than other parties.
To some, that is just cruelty.
Jeremy Hunt should stay out of subjects he knows nothing about, like abortion,health, culture, business etc and leave it to people who know what they're talking about.
States are trying to pass more of these laws- Georgia is the most recent Mississippi tried to get voters behind a law that made some birth control and all abortions, including to save the life of the mother, illegal. A couple more states are making women prove that they did nothing to cause a miscarriage or face jail time. There are a good few women sitting in jail right now awaiting their trials on the accusation of having used drugs or alcohol during a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage.
One does not think of the Conservatives as notably prayerful, let alone being still adherents to a particular religious viewpoint, although there are clearly a few MPs in all parties who have a considered religious position on this matter, just as there are others who view this as a matter of human rights. Both positions are worthy of respect, but politicizing the issue is deplorable.
Can this really be an anti-choice stance, rather than a pro-life position? Either way, where is it coming from?
What will be next? Party whips on sexuality and the death penalty? Such a development would destroy rational political debate on a host of other issues, and serve the interests of politicians of none of the parties, whose consciences would be overruled.