Abortion

Never let a good crisis go to waste, seems to be the approach of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service to the coronavirus pandemic. It has been promoting a couple of amendments to the Coronavirus Bill - two out of 14 - to allow women to take abortifacient pills at home rather than travel to a clinic to obtain the approval of two doctors, as required by law. At present, a pregnant woman in the first three months of pregnancy would take one of the pair of pills triggering the abortion in a clinic. The amendments, proposed by Liz Barker and Natalie Bennett in the Lords would have had the effect, if enacted, of drastically liberalising the abortion law and crucially, it would have allowed any health care worker – a midwife or nurse, say – to approve an abortion.

Yesterday, the Welsh government announced new guidelines to make school uniforms gender-neutral, which would mean an end to trousers being advertised for boys and skirts for girls. You can imagine the outrage if the UK government now tried to over-ride that decision, saying it was a load of silly nonsense. The rumblings in Cardiff would bring down a building or two: how dare you interfere with the decisions of Wales’ democratically-elected government, would come the cries. And they would have a point. When the Welsh voted – very narrowly – for devolution in 1997 that was that.

What’s in a name? If Jeremy Hunt wins the Conservative leadership election both prime minister and leader of the opposition will have the same forename. Has this happened before? — Between 18 July 1992 and 12 May 1994, John Major was PM and John Smith leader of the opposition. — Between 14 February 1963 and 18 October 1963, Harold Macmillan was PM and Harold Wilson leader of the opposition. — Jeremy would become one of only three forenames which have been held by leaders of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties. The other two are William (Hague/Adamson/Gladstone) and John (Major/Smith/Russell, 1st Earl of Russell). Life choices Jeremy Hunt said he personally believed that the abortion limit should be reduced to 12 weeks. How many people agree with him?

Predictably enough, there have been no calls this week for the Irish referendum on abortion to be re-run, no complaint from Ken Clarke about the ‘-tyranny of the majority’, no moaning that the campaign had been in any way unfair. Neither should there have been. The Irish people have made a fair and democratic choice and the result should be respected. Less respect seems to have been forthcoming, however, for the views of the Northern Irish on abortion. On the contrary, no sooner was the result from south of the border announced than the calls began for the government in Westminster to impose its will on Northern Ireland and liberalise the province’s abortion laws.

Never one to shy away from a platitude, the shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, has declared that the PM must reform abortion law in Northern Ireland on the basis that women there “have been let down by privileged women and men for too long” and that, so far as Theresa May is concerned, “the test of  feminists is whether they stick up for all women”. So far as this woman is concerned, I’ve been trying to work out the logic of these observations in terms of the abortion question and failing, so let’s just give up and cut to the chase.

So referendums are good now? The turnaround has been astonishing. The very people who have spent the best part of two years in moral meltdown at the fact that Britons were given a referendum on membership of the EU are now beside themselves with joy over the abortion referendum in Ireland. ‘You know who loved referendums? HITLER’, they said endlessly about the EU referendum, seeming to suffer from a bad bout of the Ken Livingstone Hitler Tourette’s. Yet now they’ve magically forgotten that all referendums are basically acts of fascism and are hailing the Irish people’s mass vote for the right of women to secure an abortion as a wonderful moment in democracy.

Is the abortion referendum going to be Ireland's Brexit moment? Despite the financial crisis, a clerical scandal and a vote on gay marriage, the country had managed to steer itself relatively harmoniously along. Yet just as the EU referendum brought to the surface deep tensions across Britain, this week's vote is in danger of doing the same to Ireland. From the outside, a decisive vote in favour of repealing the clause in Ireland's constitution that gives the unborn equal rights with the already born might have been just another chapter in Ireland's journey towards European secular modernity. But a fiercely-fought referendum battle has instead weaponised every single divide that was lurking latent in Irish society: rural versus urban, young versus old, rich against poor.

It will, as one pro-life campaigner told me, take an act of God to swing the Irish referendum for the No side tomorrow. I’m all for referendums but this one has been so wildly unbalanced as to make the Brexit campaign look almost effete in its regard for impartiality and fair play. The polls suggest a win for the Yes side, on repealing the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution which protects the right to life of the unborn – something around the 44-32 per cent margin, according to the last Irish Times poll. It’s a big deal, abortion. But there is not one political party that represents the No side, other than a tiny outfit called Renua which doesn’t have a single MP. There is no newspaper that represents this quite hefty minority.

Ahead of the abortion referendum in Ireland next week, there’s a newspaper advert doing the rounds on Twitter. Printed in the Irish Daily Star earlier this week, it reads: “Men protect lives. It is impossible to look away. As a parent, uncle, grandfather we have a bond that can never be broken. Vote No to abortion on demand” The implication appears to be that women are callous creatures who neither protect lives nor deserve protection. So men have to step in to do so. Next Friday, Irish voters will be asked if they want to repeal the eighth amendment, which gives unborn foetuses and pregnant women equal right to life. Since 2013, abortions have been allowed but only when the life of the mother is at risk.