Bring abortion bans to Britain

Sep 10, 2021 by

by James Mildred, Crisis Magazine:

This week, Texas ushered in the most restrictive abortion law in the United States since before Roe v Wade, the legal challenge that paved the way for liberalisation. From this month, abortion will not be available after a foetal heartbeat has been detected. Doctors and others who assist in procuring are abortion are liable to be sued by private citizens. The move prompted outrage from pro-abortion voices in the US and the UK, quoted in a plethora of massively partisan articles in the media. What the media hasn’t covered, is the extent to which the move to restrict abortion reflects public opinion in the US.

Polling of Texans before the Texas Heartbeat Act came into force demonstrated that around half of adults in the states supported a dramatic lowering of the legal threshold of abortion to just six weeks. The wider US public also favours stricter limits, including the younger generation. Polling of millennials and Gen Z found that more than 7 in 10 young Americans support limits on abortion, whilst less than 2 out of 10 want unlimited abortion through all 9 months. Interestingly, 6 out of 10 young Americans also think doctors should check for a heartbeat before offering or performing a termination.

Media commentators often fail to appreciate, or deliberately ignore, the extent of pro-life opinion in the US, including amongst young people. The “pro-life generation”, as it is sometimes referred to, is bucking the pro-abortion trend. Pro-life groups have waged a successful campaign to convince legislators in Texas and other states of the humanity of the unborn child. A forthcoming case in the US Supreme Court could overturn Roe v Wade, allowing individual states to forge their own path on abortion laws and resulting in more “heartbeat acts” in the future.

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