Britain has overtaken the US in establishing women’s reproductive rights.
The ground-breaking Abortion Act, first promoted as a private member’s bill by future Liberal Party leader David Steele, was passed by Parliament in 1969.
It was at the heart of the ‘Swinging Sixties’, when Britain set the pace for social reform and, according to the poet Philip Larkin: ‘Sexual intercourse began. In 1963 (which was quite late for me) – between the end of the “Chatterley” ban. And the Beatles’ first LP.”
The development of the pill was another important factor in the “liberation of women”. British voices led the protest against Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae in 1968, banning contraception for Catholics.
On matters of social and sexual freedom, the tide has not turned in the United Kingdom. Britain’s gestational age for abortion of 23 weeks and six days is longer than many equivalent countries. It is 14 weeks in France and 12 in Germany.
Meanwhile, the Conservative Party has overcome its reservations about homosexuality and same-sex marriage and is officially joining Pride Month celebrations.
This is very different from what happened in the US. The Supreme Court there ruled in Roe v. Wade, establishing by a seven-to-two vote the constitutional freedom of pregnant women across the country to choose abortion in 1973 – seven years after Britain.
The political divide over the importance of God
Most British politicians prefer not to get God involved. The US went in the opposite direction.
From President Richard Nixon onward, the Republican Party has embraced the Christian Right ever more warmly for reasons of electoral calculus uniquely American. No successful presidential or judicial candidate today would dare to say that he does not believe in God.
In June of this year, the current Supreme Court, which now includes three conservative justices nominated by former President Donald Trump, overturned the earlier Roe v Wade decision by a five-to-four vote. Their reasoning was that there could be no protected right to abortion because it was not mentioned in the constitution, which was drawn up by Christian gentlemen in the 18th century.
Half of the 50 states now take measures to ban abortion, many even in cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormalities. Abortion clinics are now closing.
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1:15 “They Kill Babies”
Circumstances are very different in Britain, but that hasn’t stopped publicity-hungry politicians from joining the American abortion debate.
Tory MP Peter Bone attacked the BBC for calling the demonstrators “anti-abortion” rather than “pro-life”. Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg reiterated his personal opposition to abortion in all circumstances.
On the other side of the row, Labor MP Stella Creasy tweeted: “You think what you see in America can’t happen here? Then you don’t understand who is organizing in UK politics.’
She and Labor MP Diana Johnston are now pushing for an “all-party amendment” to include the right to abortion in the government’s proposed British Bill of Rights.
These politicians are reaching for the living rail of the culture war.
Senior party leaders on all sides are desperate not to be drawn into the abortion debate. Filling in for an absent Boris Johnson at PMQs, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab told feminist campaigner Rosie Duffield MP that the abortion law issue was “settled” in this country.
As if to demonstrate that this is not an active battlefield, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition commented on the Supreme Court’s decision in practically the same words. Mr Johnson said it was a “huge step backwards”, Keir Starmer a “huge failure”.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called it “one of the darkest days for women’s rights in my lifetime”.
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2:53 “I had an abortion – I’m going to talk about it”
Scotland and Northern Ireland are the two parts of the UK where the anti-abortion controversy is most evident. In part, that’s because sectarian religious passions sometimes flare — both staunch Catholics and Protestant Puritans are most opposed to abortion.
In Scotland, there were protests against going into clinics in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Ms Sturgeon supports the introduction of no-go zones around them, but warns that this could be legally difficult. For now, she is leaving it to local councils to take action.
US religious rights group Alliance Defending Freedom has spent around £1.6m in recent years supporting pro-life campaigners. It’s probably one of the shadowy masterminds Stella Creasy is worried about. But John Mason, the independent SNP MP for Glasgow Shettleston, is also a prominent campaigner.
Ireland shook off its Catholic heritage with the pro-abortion referendum in 2018. But the Westminster government had to step in to bring Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the UK, despite opposition from the DUP and 61 Conservative MPs. However, the NHS in Northern Ireland has yet to facilitate second-trimester abortions in the province, forcing women to travel to mainland Britain.
The Widening Gap in Women’s Reproductive Rights
America and the UK continue to go in different directions on women’s reproductive rights. As some states move to ban morning-after pills, the government here has allowed mail-in access to continue beyond the end of the COVID lockdown.
There are other surprising consequences. Despite defending Britain’s Bill of Rights, Mr Raab, the justice minister, opposed including the right to abortion in it because he said it was better and more compulsory for these matters to be decided by elected MPs, and not by unelected judges.
Constitutional decrees coming from America are making British progressive thinkers reflect on their long-standing campaign for a written constitution here. It all depends on who writes and interprets a constitution.
Read more from Adam Boulton: The slow death of prime ministers and what awaits Boris Johnson The ties that bind the UK are under strain
Rightly or wrongly, the male-majority Supreme Court took away women’s rights at the behest of other male-dominated movements, whether the Republican Party or Christian groups.
Tory MP Danny Kruger explained to MPs that he believes “women do not have the absolute right to bodily autonomy” because the life of the fetus is also a factor in abortion.
Some of the older generation of feminists who remember the tumultuous Sixties hope that the threat to their gender might reunite them with younger women with whom they have fallen out over the relatively peripheral issue of transgender rights.
Adam Boulton writes a column every Friday for Sky News.
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