Melanie McDonagh: This is why our abortion laws are a joke

There’s been much chatter today about Keir Starmer’s declaration that it was right not to prosecute doctors who authorised abortions that were requested because of the gender of the foetus. You won’t read a better piece on the subject than the article by our new regular blogger Melanie McDonagh. She describes the full implications of Mr Starmer’s thinking:

‘As Mr Starmer made clear it’s possible for doctors to authorise an abortion without actually ever having seen the woman concerned. On this basis, pretty well any abortion is justified, on the basis that any pregnancy, carried to term, would be worse for the mental or physical health of the mother than not carrying on with it. Which may of course be true. But it wasn’t quite what parliament was led to believe when it passed the Abortion Act in 1967 on the basis that the written consent of two doctors would be some sort of guarantee that it would only happen in serious cases.’

You can read the rest of Melanie’s excellent post by visiting her blog