The abortion debate returns

I don’t like talking about abortion and so rarely do. I have never written about it before. I am uncomfortable doing so here.

It feels trite even to rehearse some of the debate. Can you simultaneously believe in a woman’s right to autonomy over her body and a baby’s right to life? Can you decide never to have an abortion, but also believe other women should be able to? Is an abortion at eight weeks different to an abortion at eight months? If pushed, I’d probably say that the answer to all of these questions is yes.

Labour’s Stella Creasy is campaigning to fully decriminalise abortion in England and Wales. ‘We can stop locking up women and instead lock in our human right to choose,’ she argued this week. MPs will soon be given the opportunity to vote on decriminalising abortion in England and Wales.

Under the current law, abortion procedures are still technically illegal, but the 1967 Abortion Act created an exception if the abortion had been approved by two doctors ‘in good faith’ under certain conditions. Abortion was fully decriminalised in 2020 in Northern Ireland and now there’s pressure to do the same in England and Wales. The latest proposal seeks to modernise the law by decriminalising abortion up to 24 weeks. An amendment by Labour MP Diana Johnson would end prosecutions for women acting in relation to their own pregnancy at any gestation, ensuring that no woman would be liable for a prison sentence as a result of seeking to end her own pregnancy.

Do we want to be open to the prospect of babies being terminated at a late stage with no repercussions for the women who choose to do so? Such an amendment would force us to consider the issue of abortion once more.