Naz Shah needs to make up her mind about abortion

There are a couple of things I just don’t get. Maybe someone of liberal mind can explain them. Didn’t equalities minister Penny Mordaunt back in July throw her weight behind Theresa May’s promise to make it much easier to reassign your own gender? Of the current process (which requires you, for example, to provide medical evidence before being allowed to redefine yourself as a woman) she said: ‘It is overly bureaucratic and it’s highly medicalised with people making decisions about you who have never met you.’ In other words, it’s your life and your decision as to which gender you wish to identify with – the state should keep its nose out and leave you alone.

This week, Mordaunt seems to have had a slight change of heart, announcing that she is launching an inquiry as to why so many teenage girls are suddenly deciding to seek help in becoming boys. While she hasn’t quite said that she wants to thwart their wishes, there is a clear implication in this inquiry that the rise in girls wanting to be boys is some kind of problem which needs officially to be addressed.