Abortion: Jeremy Hunt may be stupid, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong –

Jeremy Hunt: what a card! A row about abortion is just what the Conservative and Unionist party needs to kick-off its conference week! The MP for South West Surrey is certainly entitled to say he favours outlawing abortion outwith the first trimester; the Secretary of State for Health would have been wiser to have kept quiet. The problem is Hunt’s political judgement, not his moral compass.

Nevertheless, some of the reaction to Hunt’s comments has bordered on the hysterical. Talk of a Tory “War on Women” is as ugly as it is absurd and another example of how the witless American brand of partisanship has leaked into our political discourse. If, in some unlikely event, Britain’s abortion laws were reformed it is probable they would then be broadly comparable to those pertaining in such noted women-hating countries as Sweden and the Netherlands. So let’s not get carried away.

There are – as Dan