abortion rights

Have posted a photo article here with pictures and interviews with some of the women who are campaigning for abortion rights in Northern Ireland.

My word, they hate Gordon Brown.

Had a very useful chat with Abortion Rights campaign co-ordinator Louise Hutchins last week: the time fast approaches for the report stage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill - and for fighting attendant dingbat anti-choice amendments to the Abortion Act.

And there are plenty of them this time round, people - each more patronising to us girls than the last. And what a display they make, too: you rarely see such a memorable range of turds outside of safari.

Floating atop the pile is the legendary Edward Leigh's proposal to implement a compulsory cooling-off period of seven days for women who want abortions - Ed, I guess, having finally bought into the long-held - if unproven, perhaps - pro-life theory that when you shriek a faceful of Jesus at a woman for a calendar week, her maternal instinct replaces all her other ones.

This is not the first time Ed's taken the romantic view of our man Jesus H, of course, or indeed of the miracle of life: in only May this year, Ed was to be found blazing a conservative digital trail on the Cornerstone website (whatever the hell that is), and describing the HFEB as 'yet another affront by the government to the Judaeo-Christian values of this nation,' (I tend to put the 42 days' detention legislation and the Iraq war in that category myself, but we won't carp on that one for now) and went on to tell us that 'science has enabled us to see the child ‘walking in the womb’ at 12 weeks' - perhaps forgetting in his enthusiasm that science hasn't shown us a child walking much before 12 months outside of it...

These pro-life amendments also flag up the notion of counselling women out of their evil propensity to put themselves first and indulge in termination: 'she [a woman wanting an abortion] should have counselling 'from a registered medical practitioner, or health visitor (not Nurse Dorries, we pray) about the respective medical risks of, and about other matters relating to, terminating and carrying a pregnancy to term (those 'other matters' presumably pertaining to eternity among the dammed).

Other highlights include increasing the number of doctors required to approve late abortions and restricting abortion on mental health grounds - I will bleat on no further on the details, but give you the list to read for yourselves.

Suffice to say - as Hutchins rightly does - that the sinister aspect of these amendments is that they would have 'a very restrictive impact that would impact on all women's rights to abortion...' - they're about restricting the grounds for abortion in all cases. Unlike the attempts this year to lower the upper time limit for legal abortion from 24 weeks (a gestation at which very, very few abortions are carried out), the present pro-life amendments would affect every women who sought a termination.

ABORTION...

There's more...

crossposted at liberalconspiracy.org.

I feel the need to rant (in a gracious way) about the liberal Abortion Act amendments that have been tabled for the fast-approaching report stage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. My male chum Unity has already reported on the time-limit amendment tabled (again) by the one and only Mad Nads Dorries: I wanted to write a bit about the sensible contributions.

Tabled by Evan Harris, Chris McCafferty and Frank Dobson, the two liberal amendments would improve the Abortion Act by - to put it simply - making access to legal abortion easier than it is. The proposals are to get rid of the present requirement for two doctors to approve a request for an abortion, and to make it legal for nurses to perform the procedure.

The case for liberalising abortion law in these ways is as strong as it is encouraging. Abortion Rights has a good paper on the topic which I was reading up until a few minutes ago when their site fell off the face of the earth. Will link to the paper when I find it again.

They'll be voting to keep the 24-time limit for abortion this week: here's Labour MP Emily Thornberry on the Labour party and the pro-choice lobby's chances:

Leading Labour pro-choice MP Emily Thornberry is youngish (47), new to the national scene (first elected to parliament in 2005), able to talk a blue streak (she was a criminal lawyer), charismatic, and - at first interview, anyway - refreshingly disinterested in caution.

Truly disinterested, even: she says and does - apparently - anything. She freely describes some Labour colleagues as Neanderthals. She says that others hold views that she thought died with the 1950s. She takes a worthy - if unusual - pleasure in winding up the myriad police that patrol the Houses of Parliament. Giggling like a fruitcake, she marches us past security and up to the HoP's terraces (possibly the terraces that Plane Stupid comandeered for their Heathrow-runway protest a month or two back?) and lets us photograph her there, even though the coppers on the terraces twitch when they see the camera and call in a couple of reinforcements.

Pro-choice MP Katy Clark on gearing up for next week's vote on the existing abortion time limit of 24 weeks:

Remember this, says pro-choice MP Katy Clark: the abortion debate we're having should not be about the 24-week time limit for the legal right for abortion. The issue is purely and simply one of a woman's right to choose - whether the state should make it lawful for a woman to terminate a pregnancy. The End, in many ways.

Except that it's not the end, of course: there are only a few days left before MPs take their first vote on proposals to amend the Abortion Act via the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, and Clark is certainly one that feels that a woman's right to choose a legal abortion is 'under a very real threat.'

She is less concerned about the junk science being witlessly peddled by the likes of Queen Halfwit Nadine Dorries than she is about those MPs who sit in the middle, do not hold hardline views, and may still be persuaded to vote in unhelpful ways. That's where the danger probably lies, as attendees of this year's earlier Abortion Rights' lobbies are only too aware.

As Clark rightly pointed out at one of those lobbies, parliament is made up largely of men. Those men need to know that women won't tolerate negative equity on abortion rights. 'We must build such a campaign [that] the men who are going to vote on whether we have the right to make a choice have no choice but to accept that we need real rights…’ After all, as Clark says now: 'we [already] know which way pro-lifers will vote.'

She isn't especially minded to say how Labour MPs are likely to vote, though, which doesn't inspire confidence, altogether: 'It's a free vote... Labour MPs have traditionally been pro-choice,' is as far as Clark will go on that topic. I push her a bit further on it. She says that she has spoke to 'dozens of MPs' on the subject, but that she will not speculate on Labour's general mood or inclination on the topic of time limit. 'I won't go down that path,' she says firmly. This isn't the best thing I've heard, to be honest - is this just clever political reticence, or does it mean that Gordon Brown is still permitting his limping troops to dither?

Excellent piece by Cath on Comment is Free taking Mad Nads Dorries to bits... Nads is round the twist all right. Time for her to push off.

While you're enjoying that, which you will, check out our new campaigning website coalitionforchoice. This is a campaigning pro-choice liberal left website and a great example, if we say so ourselves, of why the web IS SO GREAT. Coming together to take down god-botherers and tories - doesn't get much better than that... truly is bloody great...

PLUS:

Abortion Rights has called an emergency protest for Tuesday 20 May at 5.30pm.

MPs will debate and vote on the anti-abortion amendments to the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill that day - the key amendments being the ones that aim to lower the time limit for abortion. We've written about these moronic proposals plenty.

This vote is taking place a lot earlier than expected and with very little notice.

What a pack of showers.

This story is also posted at liberalconspiracy.org

Why the anti-abortion lobby must be stopped from amending abortion law and reducing the upper time limit for abortion via the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

A little preamble: There is nothing in this world that winds yours truly up like political and/or religious opportunists banging on about restricting access to legal abortion, and foetus rights, and 40 years of legal abortion delivering Britain of two generations of conscience-free sluts, etc.

The truth is that pro-lifers drive me BANANAS. I have frothed about them all over the internet and most social events I've attended.

Alas, the pro-life contingent and their political backers witter on, undaunted by the fact that the great majority of the British public supports a woman's right to choose.

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About 300 women (and a small cluster of blokes) turned up at the Houses of Parliament last week for an Abortion Rights meeting about the threat posed to the 1967 Abortion Act by proposed - and opportunistic - anti-abortion amendments to the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Pro-lifers are particularly keen to lower the present 24-week gestational limit for abortion.

The bill - as you doubtless have guessed - has absolutely nothing to do with abortion law (it's about reforming the regulation of human embryology as the sciences of fertilisation and embryology move on at pace). Sadly, complete irrelevance ain't putting the god-squad off.

One Baroness Masham has already attempted to perpetrate an amendment to reduce access to abortion for women who discover their babies have severe disabilities. Her notion was to force women in that situation to see their pregnancies to term - to give birth, as renowned pro-choice doctor Wendy Savage said at the abortion rights meeting - to children they know are doomed.

MPs might be crazy, but they're not all stupid, and the brighter ones know very well how women instinctively respond to the thought of being trapped by an unwanted pregnancy.

Big fortnight ahead for us girls of the pro-abortion, anti-Jesus Christ/God/Allah/Mohamed persuasion.

Abortion Rights is holding a lobby at parliament this week on Wednesday. You can read more about this (when, where, why, etc) here.

Then on Friday 25 January, Feminist Fightback will picket the Christian Medical Fellowship at 4pm, (6 Marshalea Road, SE1 1HL, London). The CMF is lobbying the government very hard over the bill, and needs a bit of hard lobbying itself as a result.

As has been discussed on this site, a great many of us are very concerned that the anti-abortion/happy clappers lobby is using the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill as an opportunity to table amendments that threaten the Abortion Act. 

They are especially keen to reduce the legal time limit for abortion from 24 to 20 - or even 18 - weeks of pregnancy.

Thing is - does anyone really want these changes, apart from conservative political opportunists?

Pro-choice week starts tomorrow: 40 years of legal abortion in the UK.

We need to keep working to defend what we have and to liberalise abortion law further.

And we will.

Let us all encourage our MPs to sign up to pro-choice MP Laura Moffatt's early-day motion which attacks the many patronising, Lord-based myths about the effects of abortion on women.

Must do an interview with Laura soon. She's our kind of female.