Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt repeated his view that the upper time limit on abortion services should be reduced to 12 weeks from the current 24 during an interview on Ridge on Sunday.
Hunt has a history of voting for anti-choice legislation. In 2008 he voted to reduce the upper time limit to 12 weeks, and more recently voted in favour of criminalising sex-selective abortion (both votes failed to pass). As Home Secretary, Hunt blocked attempts to allow women to take the abortion pill misoprostal at home.
His comments, therefore, have provoked alarm from pro-choice campaigners. While Hunt claims he will not try to change the law on abortion if in power, they worry that his views could block any positive change to increase abortion access for women in the UK, and particularly in Northern Ireland.
12, 20 or 24 weeks?
Currently, the 1967 Abortion Act which covers England, Wales and Scotland allows for women to access a termination up to the 24th week of pregnancy, if she has permission from two doctors who conclude that continuing the pregnancy will harm her physical or mental health. A woman accessing abortion outside the provisions of the 1967 Act, for instance in Northern Ireland, faces a possible life sentence under the Victorian-era “Offences Against the Person Act.”Most calls to reduce the upper time limit focus on 20 weeks, based on medical innovations that have increased life chances for premature babies. For example, in 2008 David Cameron and much of his shadow front bench voted in favour of cutting the upper time limit to 20 weeks.
Former Conservative Vice Chair for Women, Maria Caulfield, has also called to reduce the number of weeks a woman can access an abortion to around 20 weeks, claiming that more and more babies can survive being born at 18 or 19 weeks (a claim the British Pregnancy Advisory Service called “inaccurate”).
Calls to restrict the time limit to 20 weeks often ignore the complex reasons behind rare late term abortions, including fatal foetal abnormalities or health issues in the mother.
However, arguments about foetal viability fall apart entirely when restricting abortion to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, when there is no chance of the baby surviving.
Who is harmed?
Any reduction to abortion services disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable women. It also ignores how life is rarely straight-forward.For example, very young women struggling with a crisis pregnancy may be frightened, unsure of who to turn to for help, or struggling to accept they are pregnant and in need of reproductive healthcare. Women with violent partners often they increase their abuse during pregnancy—reducing abortion access which forces a woman to continue her pregnancy could lock her into an unsafe relationship. Lack of abortion access also traps victims of forced pregnancy in abusive homes.
Finding out you’re pregnant isn’t always straightforward, either—or like on TV where morning sickness instantly clues a woman in. Not all women’s cycles are identical and it may take a woman a couple of months to realise she is pregnant. A woman might have a wanted pregnancy, only to lose her job, her home or her partner, and have to make a difficult decision to reflect her changed circumstances. All of this becomes much harder if a woman can only access an abortion up to 12 weeks.
And that’s before you even get to fact that if you are in Northern Ireland, and need to find the money for flights, accommodation and time off work to access abortion care in Britain, 12 weeks simply might not be enough time.
These issues could be helped if those advocating to cut abortion services sought to liberalise the laws in other ways—i.e. via decriminalisation. But that’s not the case. And this is all happening in the context of a stretched NHS where we are already seeing cases of women with complex health needs being denied abortions because they simply can’t get an appointment. Cuts to the time limit will mean more women forced to continue with an unwanted pregnancy and forced to give birth.
No change?
Hunt confirmed he would not be seeking to change abortion law as it currently stands, and that his view about the 12 week upper time limit is a personal one—although it is worth noting that he has expressed that “personal” view in the voting lobby.But that ‘no change’ message is in itself a cause for concern when we desperately need progressive change to UK abortion laws.
An anti-choice Prime Minister is unlikely to push for decriminalisation of abortion as demanded by Labour MP Diana Johnson, which would simplify the process women go through to access a termination and remove abortion from criminal law. More importantly, “no change” means that women in Northern Ireland are unlikely to see progressive legislation that makes abortion safe and legal for every woman in the UK.
Hunt described abortion as a matter of “conscience” which requires a free vote in Parliament as a result.
But abortion is not a matter of conscience. It is a matter of women’s human rights—our basic right to bodily integrity. Right now, that right is denied to thousands of women in the UK. We are a pro-choice country who needs a pro-choice leader willing to change our abortion laws so they are fit for purpose in 2019. Hunt may say he won’t change our laws to make them more regressive, but neither will we see the progress that all UK women need and deserve.
