Ten minute rule bill on termination of pregnancy
Glad this bill to restrict a woman’s right to choose was lost today:
TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY
Mrs Nadine Dorries
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to reduce the time limit for legal termination of pregnancy from 24 to 21 weeks; to introduce a cooling off period after the first point of contact with a medical practitioner about a termination; to require the provision of counselling about the medical risk of, and about matters relating to, termination and carrying a pregnancy to term as a condition of informed consent to termination; to enable the time period from the end of the cooling off period to the date of termination to be reduced; and for connected purposes.
The speeches and a list of who voted which way is available I’ve criticised on this subject in the past. Other notables voting against further restrictions on abortion included Jon Cruddas. Unsurprisingly given the depth of their commitment to equality, the Tory spokesperson on women’s issues, Eleanor Laing, voted in favour.
Update: it’s also worth reading this post and comments at the Daily for more detail on who voted which way and why.
I agree - Good result today!
It’s not normal for me to say this, but I think you’re being a teeny bit hard on the massed ranks of Tories by lumping them in with Eleanor Laing. It is a free vote/moral issue after all…
Aye, Evan Harris was a teller for the noes, no less.
I don’t think it is too hard on the Tory ranks by lumping them with Eleanor Laing. They may not agree with her but as the Tory spokesperson on Women’s Issues we have to accept that what she said is the party line.
Interesting analysis on the The Daily http://thedaily.wordpress.com/ including the observation that a large number of Government ministers (and deputy leadership candidates) were absent from this important vote.
I don’t think it’s harsh to note that the Aye lobby was virtually all Tories while the Noes were overwhelmingly Labour and Lib Dem. Another 40 Tories in Parliament and it would have been a very close run thing.
On the other hand though, there were plenty of senior Labour figures who didn’t make the vote.
More here…
http://thedaily.wordpress.com/2006/11/01/anti-choice-law-defeated/
Pete - and it’s noticeable that the best predictor of how people vote that I can see is party affiliation. I reckon I can call out the Tory women’s spokesperson’s vote as indicative of the Tories’ superficial concern with the women’s vote.
People who promote abortion are scum in the mold of Myra Hindley, Ian Brady, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr.
But no one is promoting abortion. They are promoting a womans right to choose. Like Cruddas said in an ideal world abortion should be rare; but people should be able to get one if they need one
No man or woman has the right to choose to murder an unborn child.
Language is an interesting thing, isn’t it? Nobody (except a few crackpots) is arguing that having lots and lots of abortions is a particularly good thing. Opinions range from those who are neutral about the fate of the foetus but concerned about the mother through those who try to make a compromise between the rights of the mother and foetus to those who consider any abortion under any circumstance to be infanticide. The latter group tends to accuse the former of “promoting foetal murder” and the like, and the former group tends to accuse the latter of hating women and wanting to keep them barefoot in the kitchen. Neither accusation is either sensible or accurate.
There seems to me to be a lot of similarities with discussions about war. Nobody (at least, nobody sane) thinks that war is, of itself, a good thing. Opinions range from those who think that countries should have the right to go to war to protect their interests through those who think that there should be some restrictions to balance the interests of the warring country and the casualties (these people ususally cite the UN and/or international consensus as their preferred restrictions), through those that think that war is only ever acceptable in self-defence to pacifists who consider war unacceptable in any circumstances. The language used by the pacifist end of the spectrum about the “pro-war” end is remarkably similar to the language used by the pro-life groups about people who are pro-choice, and the language used by the hawks about the pacifists is rather similar to that used by pro-choice about pro-life.
Geoff - lets not be ridiculous. So someone gets raped, doesn’t have the ability to look after their child. And its fundamentally their body anyway.
Thats coming from a Christian. Someone that was brough up on the whole pro life argument. But since then I’ve been out into the world and realised what real life is like.
My understanding is that Evan Harris felt very strongly that Parliament should debate this issue because medical science has moved on and because Parliament had not debated it for a long time.
You seemed to have interpreted this as being the same thing as supporting a reduction in the limit.
He clearly doesn’t agree with that.
Adele - Your throwaway “and it’s fundamentally their body anyway” is the crux of the argument - not an afterthought.
I have never understood the argument that says “killing an unborn child is murder, but it’s OK if the mother was raped.” Talk about visiting the sins of the father on the child!
If abortion really is the same as murdering a person, there can be no exceptions for rape or incest—however horrible it is to carry a child who is the product of rape, it can’t justify a murder.
If you think it’s OK to abort the product of rape, you are automatically assigning the foetus a status lower than that of a human life. (Not necessarily no status, although that’s possible.) You now have potentially competing interests—the woman, who is an individual and has the right to control her own body, and the foetus, who although not endowed with full personhood, might have some interest in staying alive. [Sidenote: the father doesn't matter here. His interest must be smaller than the mother's, as it's not his body that is occupied for 9 months. If the foetus trumps the mother, it does so with or without a father.] Once you have these competing interests, you can argue with about as much validity for fairly restrictive limits or few limits on abortion. I’ll mention in passing that it’s really quite difficult to come to a “rape and incest only” restriction with any semblance of logic.
You can go further, and assign the foetus the same status as, say, a cat. You can’t cause it unnecessary pain, but you can have it put down if it looks like it might be too expensive to look after it. Here, you should allow abortion until you think the foetus graduates to personhood, at the whim of the mother. You can still think that abortion is sad, just as putting a cat down is sad, but the rights of the person must dominate.
Neil - I thought I heard him say that he was in favour of reviewing the timelimits in the hust we attended during the GE at the Civic Centre in Abingdon, organised by Churches Together in Abingdon. I’ll have a root through his public statements on the issue.
I never wrote that rape was OK, so stop imposing your words on me.
That’s my point.
He was in favour of reviewing the time limits because medical science had moved on.
That is not the same thing as being in favour of reducing them.
It is quite possible to review something and conclude that it doesn’t need changing.
I see that “feminist” Harriet Harman didn’t even bother to turn up for the vote…
Why review unless you want to reduce?
Oh, and it’s also worth pointing out that at the General Election hustings Antonia is talking about, Evan not only said he was working to get a review of the time limit but that his allies in this were none other than the Christian Institute.
So much for being a friend to the LGBT community…
Why review unless you want to reduce?
A review doesn’t always mean a reduction, sometimes it might mean an increase or reaffirming the status quo.
Fair play and good point Antonia - I’m always up for some Tory bashing anyway.
Out of curiosity, if we were to assume that a 10 minute rule Bill on capital punishment would find similar Party dividing lines pro and anti would you make the same sort of judgement call on Tory policy?
Hope things are being fun in Ox.
You can see how the Christian Institute rates Evan’s voting record here:
http://www.christian.org.uk/mpvotes.php?selection=442&value1=442&value2=1
As far as Evan’s record on LGBT issues is concerned surely he should be judged on his voting record as an MP, not on the basis that one particualr organisation happens to agree with him on one particualr issue.
On that basis those of us rooting for the Democrats tonight could be considered ‘fellow travellers’ with a lot of very right wing policies!
Oh, thanks for that link Neil - the Christian Institute list of “morally right” MP votes will provide hours of fun! Very glad to see my MP has voted in a morally incorrect way on every vote except one…
Adele: “But since then I’ve been out into the world and realised what real life is like.”
That’s because you were allowed out of the womb!