by Jimmy Nicholls, The Critic
New proposals to completely decriminalise abortion are immoral
It’s a peculiar thing for a country that carries out a quarter of a million abortions a year to seriously field claims that women’s ability to terminate their pregnancies is under grave threat. But in recent years abortion proponents have repeatedly warned women’s rights are in jeopardy, threatened by Victorian abortion laws.
As in much of British political life, you can blame the Americans. When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022, pushing abortion law down to the state level, the likes of Stella Creasy warned that It Could Also Happen Here, setting in motion efforts to put abortion law on a stronger footing.
Despite these claims that nefarious American Evangelicals are set to impose theocracy here, the past five years have seen abortion only become more readily accessible. Abortion activists are about to make the final jump, a parliamentary amendment seeking to wholly decriminalise abortions, allowing women to end their pregnancies legally up until the moment of birth.