World War on Women

Women's rights are in peril again -- now in the UK too.

The new Minister for Women, Maria Miller, who has the gall to call herself 'a very modern feminist', wants to lower the legal abortion limit from 24 to 20 weeks.

Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May also back a reduction to 20 weeks.

And now the new Minister of Health, Jeremy Hunt, is going even further. He wants to lower the limit to 12 weeks.

Note that this Minister of Health backs homeopathy, or as a science blogger put it, 'he believes in magic'.

And of course there, as here, women's rights are considered a frippery, subject to a free fucking vote.

And there, as here, women's rights are always open for negotiation. Abortion came up in the 2010 election, not long after a similar reduction in the time limit was voted down in 2008 but only because Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, whipped her party members, demonstrating again why people call her Harriet Hardwoman.

To add insult to injury, 40 Days of Harassment has slithered across the pond. Abortion clinics are under siege from Christian nutters, who learned from their USian counterparts.

This is at least the second year the UK has been invaded by clinic harassers. Last year I started following someone calling herself @40daysoftreats, who countered the fetus fetishists' efforts by encouraging people to bring treats for clinic workers and patients. Insults outside, Jammie Dodgers inside.

Natch, the Brits are appalled. There, as here, sane people watch what's going in the USian War on Women in slack-jawed wonder, thinking: 'That can't possibly happen here'.

Oh yeah?

The UK rightly prides itself on its abortion law. It's been legal there since 1967, albeit with some conditions.

Conditions that sane people would like to see liberalized, not CONservatized.

Viz, the first comment here by Josh Kutchinsky.

UK law should be brought in line with that of Canada in relation to abortion, i.e. repealed so as to decriminalise abortion.

I am more pro-life than many who usurp the name but not the meaning. I would provide good sex and relationships education. I would provide support and counselling. I would provide contraceptives and knowledge as to how to use them properly. This is how to reduce all abortions not just control some in order to increase the number of back street ones or encourage self administered procedures. Numbers of foetuses aborted would be reduced, number of women dying reduced, number of unwanted, malnourished, sick and dying children reduced. Respect for women as autonomous human beings to be treated with dignity and equality and not patronised and infantalised would be much increased. That's really pro-life.

Yep. That's what I would call pro-life too.


ADDED: A call to arms from a British blogger, who warns that anti-choice will win if pro-choicers aren't prepared. A lesson we've learned well in Canada,eh?

Restoring *morality* to Britain - PM's double standard.

David Cameron has promised to “restore a sense of morality” to Britain [...] announcing stronger police powers to ensure that offenders are caught and made to pay for their crimes.

From here.

Ooooh. Let's have some fun with the perorations emanating from that self-righteous, pompous dickhead, shall we? It's just a matter of changing the focus from alleged criminals (awaiting charges) to a different alleged criminal, still at large in spite of mountains of evidence and one dead - how convenient, that! - whistleblower and witness.

Addressing MPs recalled from their summer break, the Prime Minister cast News Corp's repeated illegal phone hacking incidents as a “deep moral failure”, and laid much of the blame at the door of *captains of industry* whose staff took part in illicit activies.

Managers and employees alike must be made to take greater responsibility for their actions, Mr Cameron said. “This is a time for the country to pull together,” he said. “We will restore a sense of stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.”

Rejecting claims that greed fuelled the law-breaking, Mr Cameron said the root causes of this criminality were cultural, not economic. “This is not about greed, this is about culture.” He also said that illegal phone hacking must be seen as nothing less than ordinary crime. “Employees were told to engage in these criminal activities and to corrupt police officials; it wasn't about freedom of the press, it was about unchecked thuggery,” he said.

Turning to the deeper causes of these events, Mr Cameron said that abusive exploitation of workers and poor corporate management had played significant role. “In too many cases, the owners of these corporations don’t care what their managers do, as long as profits grow and their competitors are destroyed," he said.

“The potential consequences of neglect and immorality on this scale have been clear for too long, without enough action being taken.” Conservative MPs are demanding tough punishments for offenders, and Mr Cameron insisted that severe penalties will be imposed.

“These people were all volunteers. They didn’t have to do what they did. They will suffer the consequences,” he said. Addressing offenders directly, he said: “We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you. You will pay for what you have done.”

Yes! More robust policing! Oh. Wait.

In the interim however, how about cutting off Rupert Murdoch's News Corp generous subsidies aka *Corporate Welfare*, which he enjoys thanks to an intricate scheme of deferred tax payments, off-shore holdings and exploitation of elaborate legal loopholes generously available to corporations but not to ordinary citizens?

In the spirit of Cameron's words, when he backed a call Friday to withdraw welfare benefits from rioters ...

People who flout the letter of the law and abuse their own readers should no longer be allowed to benefit from *Corporate Welfare* - reflecting the tough line [Cameron] has taken over weeks of revelations that News Corp managers and employers broke laws. "Obviously, that will mean they'll have to finance themselves in the private sector - and that will be tougher for them, but they should have thought of that before they started breaking laws," he said.

"If you are a corporation receiving benefits, you're getting a break from the taxes ordinary people have to pay and with that should come some responsibility," Cameron told BBC television.

"For too long we've taken a too-soft attitude towards corporations that loot and pillage in the name of commerce. If you do that you should lose your right to the sort of advantages that the public has been subsidizing."

And the next state to get riled up over abortion is. . .

The UK.

Really.

A general election has been called for May and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, is definitely opening the abortion debate.

Cameron himself calls for the lowering of the abortion time limit, giving one of the first interviews of his election campaign to the Catholic Herald. He says that he thinks "the way medical science and technology have developed in the past few decades does mean that an upper limit of 20 or 22 weeks would be sensible." (The current limit is 24 weeks.)

That Cameron should choose to deliberately make abortion an election issue - and so early in the campaign - is deeply alarming. Those vociferous anti-choice Conservatives who hijacked the last Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in order to launch an unsuccessful assault on abortion rights have pledged to reopen the debate if elected. It's a terrifying prospect that they should now enjoy their leaders' support so explicitly.

Cameron is entirely wrong that scientific advances require a revision of the upper limit. The government's own science and technology committee, reporting to parliament in 2007 at the time of the HEF Bill, along with the Royal College of Gynaecologists and the British Association of Perinatal Medicine all concurred that the survival of babies born under 24 weeks has not improved to such an extent that they see any value in redefining the limit.

It's also worth remembering that late abortion (at 20 or more weeks' gestation) is rare, accounting for just 1.6% of all procedures. And those women who opt for them are the most vulnerable of abortion recipients, often suffering from mental illness or domestic violence.

In short, it's time to dust off your pro-choice banners. Meanwhile, remind your socially liberal neighbour who is still flirting with voting Tory about the harsh reality of their compassionate Conservatism.

Thing is, they just had the abortion debate in Britain.

His comments brought an angry reaction from pro-choice groups, which accused him of resurrecting an issue that has already been comprehensively debated in parliament.

In 2008 MPs rejected a free vote to reduce the time limit to 22 weeks by 304 to 233 – with wider margins on alternatives proposals to reduce it to 20, 18 and 12 weeks.

Remember how Harriet Hardman, Deputy Labour Leader, whipped that vote?

Technically, once the MPs turned up, they could vote either way. In reality, sources say, they were greeted by Ms Harman’s group, who pressured them to vote against the move, proposed by Tory MP Nadine Dorries.

According to one account, women Labour MPs formed a ‘human corridor’ to channel their colleagues into the ‘No’ lobby. One Labour MP claimed to have heard one of Ms Harman’s team shout: ‘Vote against us and the sisterhood will never let you forget it.’

Ah, if only the fucking Liberals here had a Harriet Hardwoman.

But, hey, it's politics, where women's rights are ALWAYS negotiable.