 | | | | by Ellie Lee |
Should abortion be an election issue?
| The UK shadow health secretary Liam Fox thinks it should - arguing in January 2001 that there should be 'a huge restriction, if not abolition' of the current law.
| Fox soon backed down, calling instead for a reduction in the time limit governing at what stage a woman can have an abortion. But his suggestion that the Tory Party should 'pray' for a change in the abortion law caused some consternation within Tory Party Central Office. As Andrew Lansley, shadow cabinet office minister, explained on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday 24 January 2001, the last thing politicians want is for abortion to become a focus for debate in the UK general election.
| As far as the Tory Party goes, nothing could be more true. The prospect of the pro-life brigade being given the green light to bang on about the need for bans on abortion, the right to life of the unborn child, and to subject us all to looking at pictures of developing fetuses or, even worse, aborted ones, must send a chill down the spines of Conservative strategists.
| Just looking at the US experience, the emergence of divisions in the party, as there are in Republican ranks, and the branding of the Tories as 'fundamentalist extremists' because of their association with the moral absolutism of the anti-choice lobby, is the Conservative Party's worst nightmare. If there is anything the Tories do not need, it is splits and accusations of extremism.
| Apart from this, there is no demand for abortion law reform - or even for public debate about the subject. There are no sizeable lobbies currently active on the abortion issue in the UK. Abortion is truly depoliticised, and has become considered by practitioners and in the public mind as a medical matter, rather than a political one, best decided on by the woman concerned and her doctor (1).
| But this does not necessarily mean that there is no place for the political discussion of abortion in the run-up to the UK general election.
| If the abortion issue is ever raised at election times, it is raised by those who want to restrict access to abortion, rather than those who support its availability. The vast majority of current Labour MPs profess to support access to abortion, and most argue privately that it should be up to the pregnant woman to decide whether she wants to bear and rear a child.
| Yet the notion that law and policy should reflect this view is something they refuse to argue in public. Pro-choice politicians remain scared of the 'A-word' - even though there is no reason to be.
| For the vast majority of people in the UK today, abortion is now accepted as a fact of life. There are around 180,000 abortions carried out in the UK each year, and a quarter of all women will have at least one abortion. As Ann Furedi, director of communications for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), has pointed out: 'Women may not intend to rely on abortion as a means of family planning, but in reality that is often the way it works out. Women today expect to have control over their fertility and are expected to control their fertility. The need for 'family planning' is almost universally accepted even among the most conservative thinkers.' (2)
Abortion today is no longer the stigmatised procedure it once was. Rather, it has become accepted by most people as an essential back-up to contraception. While everybody would prefer couples to regulate their fertility through contraception alone, in practice, many cannot.
| | A recent survey by BPAS found that more than 60 percent of women claimed to have been using contraception when they became pregnant. While this figure may be inflated, since many women may feel uncomfortable in admitting that they did not use contraception, it is a fact that contraception often fails, and that people fail to use it correctly, or to use it at all. Pills are missed, or taken at the wrong time of day; condoms split or are used incorrectly; the best of intentions to insert a cap may go horribly wrong after a couple of glasses of wine.
| This is the reality; and unless we decide that we want recreational sex to lead to the 'punishment' of bearing a child when contraception fails, then abortion is needed. The vast majority of healthcare professionals understand this (which is why the latest guideline on abortion from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists designates abortion as a healthcare need for women) (3).
| Most policymakers also accept the need for abortion, because it matches the overall direction of current social policy. In policy, at the present time, a high premium is placed on 'good parenting'. Policy is based on the notion that children should be wanted, and well cared for by their parents. In this respect, the prospect of the birth of thousands of unwanted children, which would be the practical outcome of restrictive abortion law, does not fit easily with current policy imperatives.
So if this is the case, why not make it clear that abortion law and policy should make it easy for women to access abortion? The notion that the law, and that policy arrangements, should attempt to place barriers in the way of women who want to end unwanted pregnancy is just nonsensical. Yet, formally at least, this is the situation we have.
| In practice, it is becoming increasingly easy for women to get abortions, at least in the first three months of pregnancy. But the law still rests on the idea that this should not be the case. The current law was not designed (as anti-choice campaigners never tire of pointing out) to lead to 'abortion on request'. Far from it. Its aim was to create a system of vetting, where doctors assess a woman's case for abortion and decide which women are 'deserving' cases, and which are not. Hence the law demands that two doctors agree 'in good faith' that a woman meets one of the four grounds specified in the Abortion Act, if she is to have an abortion.
| Now, however, there is a substantial gap between the formal terms of the law and what currently happens in practice. In reality, most doctors rightly judge that women who say they do not want to take a pregnancy to term should not be compelled to do so. Many doctors now interpret the Act liberally, and concede to women's requests for abortion, whatever their reason. This is just how it should be. But surely, then, if we are to have an abortion law at all, it should match with current, very sensible practice - as opposed to the anachronistic legislation we have at the present time.
| Policy should also aim to meet with women's abortion needs. It would be simply unacceptable to people to have access to maternity care in hospitals rationed. Yet this is what happens with abortion. In some local health authorities, women can get an abortion; in others they cannot, and have to pay a charitable service to get the operation they need. Abortion should, in contrast to this practice, be treated as a central aspect of women's healthcare needs, be properly funded, and should no more be subject to rationing criteria than smear tests or maternity care.
| Given the gap that exists between current law and policy, and a sensible approach to the regulation and provision of abortion services, there is a strong case for abortion to be an election issue. But it should be an election issue on which politicians are prepared to argue from a pro-choice perspective. There is not a call for single-issue politics. It is simply an argument that New Labour, which does profess to stand for women's rights and needs, should make reform of abortion law, and commitments to equalise access to abortion, part of its health policy agenda.
| I have no doubt that it is more likely to rain frogs than for New Labour to commit to abortion provision in this way. But nevertheless, it remains the case that abortion is not an embarrassment or a problem - it is a solution to a problem. Politicians should stop being so spineless, and speak of it as such.
| Ellie Lee is coordinator of the Pro-Choice Forum, and a research fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Southampton. She is the author of Abortion, Motherhood, and Mental Health: Medicalising Reproduction in the United States and Great Britain, Walter de Gruyter, 2004 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)). She is also the editor of Abortion: Whose Right?, Hodder Murray, 2002 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)); Designer Babies: Where Should We Draw the Line?, Hodder Murray, 2002 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)); and Abortion Law and Politics Today, Palgrave Macmillan, 1998 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)).
Read on:
Never too late by Ann Furedi
(1) For a detailed account of the 'medicalisation' of abortion, see S Sheldon, Beyond Control, Medical Power and Abortion Law, Pluto Press, 1997
(2) See Ann Furedi, 'Abortion is not a problem' here and the BPAS website
(3) RCOG, The Care of Women Requesting Abortion. Summary available at the Pro-Choice Forum website, and copies can be ordered from the RCOG bookshop, 27 Sussex Place, Regent's Park, London NW1 4RG, or via their website
|
|
|
| | |
