On The Abortion Act

Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Abortion Act in the U.K. At a time when women’s reproductive rights are under attack globally, with women facing imprisonment for having a miscarriage, where women have died in Ireland, because the doctors had their hands tied by the law and in America, where Abortion rights are increasingly restricted and people have their rights to use the Pill under attack.

In 1967, women in the U.K. could die or be left sterile at the hands of backstreet abortionists. Some of them were very good, but many were not. Desperate women, who couldn’t afford to seek treatment in private clinics abroad, had few options: disgrace and a mother’s home, where their child would probably be adopted, forced into marriage or a backstreet abortion. This was before the days of oral contraception being widely available. 

My mother was a young solicitor, working for the civil service and she was asked to join the drafting team. My mother was an incredibly intelligent woman, who could look at all the evidence and make a reasonable decision. She knew that this Act was the right thing to do and worked on it. For her, it wasn’t about killing babies, a claim the pro-life crowd often make, it was about saving the lives of pregnant women. Remember, one of the criteria relating to abortion is about the mental health of the mother? I often wonder what stories they heard or experiences she and the rest of their team had to put that consideration in.

Abortion isn’t about getting rid of unwanted pregnancies for convenience or a form of contraception. As someone who has nursed people, I know the reactions they have and I don’t judge them at all. Every individual in this situation has made the decision they have for a reason and it is their right to do so. I don’t have the right to decide what is right for anyone else. I mean, gender selective abortion, using it as a form of contraception because nothing else has been used - well, yes, I have a problem with that. I don’t believe in abortion personally myself, but I am pro-choice and I will defend any person’s right to safe abortion with my life, because I do not have the right to force my beliefs on others. I am a supporter of Daisy Chain - an organisation who offer support to women having to walk past protestors for appointments at clinics. Pro-life groups harass already vulnerable people and I think it is appalling. I’d like to see them excluded from hospital premises and put under a minimum 100m ban from approaching. Their right to free speech is interfering with medical treatment and they have no right to badger anyone about why they are going anywhere for any procedure. 

In many cases, people choose abortion, sometimes for their own health. For some, it’s related to serious genetic and other conditions that have shown up on prenatal testing. These are all difficult decisions for people.

I once asked my mother about what she thought about the Abortion Act, given she had five children and refused a termination for her fifth child, even when told she would probably die at birth or the baby would die (for the record, she had her fifth section and my sibling was just fine). She had a lot of people, including her own retired GP father telling her to have a termination. She told me quite simply that it was about the numbers of women who were dying, contracting infections, becoming unable to have babies in future. She was shocked at the figures she was seeing. That was why she supported the Act and it’s drafting. She then told me that within a year of it becoming law they knew it had worked.

The numbers of women dying dropped. The new law had saved lives.

So today, I will be thinking about my mother, who, for all her faults in parenting me, made such a massive contribution to women’s reproductive rights in this country. 

Thanks Mum.