8.7 million embryos and foetuses have been killed since the passing of the Abortion Act 1967 – around the time of the introduction of almost fail-safe contraception, the ‘Pill’ – and this year is the 50th anniversary. We hope that pro-lifers in churches and elsewhere will take the opportunity to publicly demonstrate their opposition to elective abortion, and we will join them.
We covered the issue of abortion in our 2015 general election manifesto (pp. 5-6).
Our thanks to Joan for pointing us to a piece on the website of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). Written by Paul Tully, it’s titled, ‘If abortion is not a crime, what is it?’ He starts:
Abortion providers in Britain have long recognised that they skate on thin ice. Abortion in Britain is illegal, except when the Abortion Act exceptions apply. In practice, doctors can get away with invoking the exceptions in practically any situation (even sex-selection abortion it seems).
But although the way the law is framed means that doctors escape prosecution, the practice of abortion-for-all-comers, often termed “abortion on demand”, is unlawful. And the abortion providers (and their legal advisers) know this, and this is a key reason why they are asking for what they call “decriminalisation” of abortion.
The article was prompted by a call from the Women’s Equality party for the decriminalisation of abortion. Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality party, said at her party’s conference in November:
Any denial of reproductive rights is a form of violence against women.
By ‘denial of reproductive rights’ Ms Walker means, among other things, limiting women’s ‘choice’ to kill their unborn for any reason they deem fit. If that isn’t the ultimate gynocentric position, born of feminism – an ideology with no moral compass – I don’t know what is.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
In what circumstances is it not illegal? This sounds similar to the circumcision issue.
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Lawrence, we covered abortion in our manifesto (pp.5,6):
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I’m not sure there’s much more to say beyond that, and the SPUC article. The Abortion Act 1967 makes abortion (up to 24 weeks’ gestation) ‘legal’ with the signature of two doctors, forms are sometimes signed in advance by doctors and made available to abortion ‘providers’ to use for as-yet-unspecified pregnant women’s abortions. The equivalent in terms of circumcision would be a parliamentary override to make it legal, and that has never existed.
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Walker could have referred to abortion as a ‘Murder of convenience’.
That, of course would have somewhat limited it’s use as a weapon of propaganda…
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I would have thought, furthermore, that there is a risk if “self-induced abortion” (to use Sophie Walker’s term) is decriminalised of returning to the days of backstreet providers and creating a situation extremely dangerous to women. Walker hasn’t thought this through, blinded by her extreme ideology.
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And another thing – it’s quite clear, from reading the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 – which Walker dismisses as “Victorian” – that its purpose was to protect women. The Act is Victorian because it was sufficiently well written not to require updating – if it ain’t broke… The law which needs rewriting is the 1967 Act.
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It is instructive to look at the sort of people Sophie Walker is proposing to protect through reform of the law. Prosecutions for procuring illegal abortions are quite rare, but here are a few recent cases:
In 2011, father of two Dr Edward Erin spiked his lover, Bella Prowse’s, drinks with poison after she refused an abortion. He was jailed for 6 years and struck off the medical register. Prowse gave birth to a healthy boy. In 2013, Richard Hallam was jailed for 10 years for seeking – unsuccessfully – to cause his girlfriend to abort their child. His crime was discovered after he was arrested for attacking another woman with a hammer. In the worst such case, Mohammad Karrar from Eritrea, leader of the notorious Oxford sex-gang which preyed on pre-teen and teenage girls, was jailed for life with a 20-year minimum tariff – also in 2013 – for crimes including rape, child prostitution, sexual trafficking and procuring a miscarriage. When the girl with whom he had regularly been having sex since she was 11 became pregnant, he told her she should have been more responsible, gave her drugs and took her to Reading where a backstreet abortion was performed with a hooked instrument. She bled for a long time afterwards.
If abortion is not a crime, what is it?
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