SARAH VINE: If the Left had wanted to provoke a pro-life movement like in the US, then this vote was a great start
Yesterday in the House of Commons Parliament voted by 379 votes to 137 to decriminalise abortion up to and including full term.
There are no two ways about it. Our elected representatives, the people charged with safeguarding the interests of every man, woman and child in this country, have just voted for the state-sanctioned killing of foetuses that would be entirely viable if they were allowed to be born. To my mind, it is, quite frankly, morally indefensible.
I am by no means anti-abortion. I understand that there are situations where the death of a foetus cannot be avoided, or where a termination is necessary. I have no issue with the morning-after pill being readily available, either.
Women have a right to autonomy over their bodies. But like all these things, there are limits – moral and medical.
For the most part, babies are not viable outside the womb much before 24 weeks, but after that they can and do survive.
The current legislation around abortion reflects that. It's not a perfect cut-off point – there will always be exceptions – but it's probably the least bad option. In any case, very few women opt for abortion at this stage, not least because it involves full labour and delivering a stillborn baby.
But now, thanks to Tonia Antoniazzi, Stella Creasy (who wants to go even further, and fully indemnify the partners and medics involved from threat of prosecution) and the powerful abortion lobby, you can theoretically kill a nine-month-old foetus – provided it's still in the womb.
This is precisely the sort of insanity that gives feminism a bad name. Because, of course, the whole issue has been re-framed as a question of 'women's rights', which it is most emphatically not. It's a human rights issue: the right of one human to life – versus another's right to take it without fear of repercussion.
The irony is that part of the reason this is happening is not because abortion is hard to come by in Britain – but because it's become so much easier.
Thanks to measures introduced during Covid, women can now obtain at-home abortion pills over the phone, without the need for a face-to-face consultation, and with no requirement for them to be administered under medical supervision.
These pills are only safe and legal up to ten weeks of pregnancy (which is when the vast majority of terminations take place); but the system is open to abuse.
Before the need for face-to-face appointments was abolished, there were just three prosecutions of women for illegal abortions in a period of 160 years; since the new system was introduced, there have been six.
One of them was the case of Nicola Packer, 45, who last month was cleared of 'unlawfully administering herself a poison or other noxious thing' with the 'intent to procure a miscarriage' at around 26 weeks. Packer's supporters have cast her as a victim, which maybe she is.
In court, her defence claimed that she was heavily traumatised by the experience of being arrested and prosecuted. But is that really a reason to declare open season on unborn babies?
I could perhaps understand some part of this were there still any degree of stigma surrounding unmarried mothers. But this is not 1925. No one cares any more if a woman has a baby on her own. There's no shame or embarrassment in it, no one is going to force anyone to go to live with evil nuns.
And besides, why not just take the baby to term and give it up for adoption? There are plenty of childless couples desperate for a newborn who would be only too grateful.
Adoption in this country is complicated and mired in red tape. Why doesn't Parliament vote to resolve that problem instead?
But also, on a more personal level, why let it get to that stage? These days you can tell if you're pregnant almost immediately after having sex. If you don't want to be, there are many easy ways of remedying that situation before mitosis (cell division) has even begun. Is that so hard?
One thing's for certain. If the Left want to provoke a hardline pro-life movement of the kind that exists in the US, yesterday's vote was an excellent start.
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