A problem with so-called “progressive” politics is that, before long, its delusions end up colliding with reality. And so it is that, after spending the past few years seemingly unable to articulate what a woman is, the Scottish Government suddenly appears to have grasped the distinctiveness of the sexes after all. They let this slip via a report published last November of its Abortion Law Reform “Expert Group”, which recommended that sex-selective abortion should be permitted in Scotland. When babies’ lives are at stake, suddenly biological sex, determined in the womb note, matters after all.
The group the Scottish Government appointed to propose changes to abortion law north of the border, by the report’s own admission, did not include a single pro-life voice. Instead, it was chaired by a former trustee of the UK’s largest abortion provider BPAS and also included BPAS’ Head of Advocacy — it certainly makes advocacy easier if your chief lobbyist is tasked with writing the Government’s own recommendations for change!
This lack of balance on the so-called “independent” Expert Group was extraordinary. The excuse provided for such partisanship was a desire to include only those with experience of implementing the 1967 Abortion Act. And yet, the report, far from recommending better implementation of the current law, a law already interpreted far more broadly than ever intended by its architects, is a barely disguised attempt to change the law beyond recognition — indeed, to move abortion outside of a legal framework.
Scotland has a habit of observing what Westminster does and then attempting to go a step further. For example, shortly after MPs voted for assisted suicide to be introduced in the House of Commons, MSPs voted at their equivalent of Second Reading for an even more extreme assisted suicide law, which does not include the requirement of a six-month prognosis in its eligibility criteria for terminally ill people, in Scotland.
In similar fashion, after watching MPs vote to remove any legal deterrent against women performing their own abortions up to birth back in June — already a ghastly proposal that will endanger women, as well as lead to the abortions of viable babies — this new Scottish report is proposing that healthcare professionals should also be able to perform abortions to full term, if they think it “appropriate”.
Currently, abortion in Scotland is permitted up to 24 weeks on certain grounds, including mental health grounds, which are interpreted so broadly as to allow, de facto, abortion on demand for social reasons until this point in pregnancy. The new proposals, however, would remove any requirement for necessary grounds or two doctors to sign off on abortions before 24 weeks and permit abortions after 24 weeks if deemed “appropriate”, a consideration which includes regard for a woman’s “psychological and social circumstances”, eerily similar to the language used at the moment to allow abortion on social grounds up to 24 weeks.
This is extreme, sinister and wildly out of step with the views of the public, who support a moderate reduction in our abortion time limit, which is already double the most common time limit in European Union countries.
What is particularly extraordinary, however, is how the Scottish Government seems to have learned nothing from its mistakes over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. Having reaped the consequences of its reckless decision to allow groups like Stonewall to write its policy on gender self-identification, it appears the Scottish Government has again all but outsourced its policy on a controversial issue to activist groups.
Indeed, there is a clear conflict of interest here. Abortion providers, who stand to benefit from many of the proposals the report suggests, including largely removing them from criminal liability, diluting reporting requirements and scrutiny, and permitting abortions to be performed in a wider variety of locations and by healthcare professionals who are not doctors, were given free rein to lobby for a law to suit their purposes.
Not only that, but just as the Scottish Government provided Stonewall with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of funding, “Engender”, one of the organisations leading the campaign for abortion to be permitted up to birth in Scotland, and whose policy manager was a member of the group behind last week’s report, has received 98 per cent of its funding and over £1 million from the Scottish taxpayer.
BPAS and its cheerleaders in the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, fellow members of the Scottish review group, also need to come clean on their plans south of the border. Only five months ago, they were supporting a law that was, albeit unconvincingly, presented as moderate because it retained the prohibition on medical professionals performing abortions after 24 weeks. At the time, BPAS explained that it sought “a new Abortion Act”, was “taking part in… reform in Scotland” and was then “determined to make the same change in England and Wales.”
When Peers vote on the Westminster abortion up to birth amendment in the House of Lords in the new year, they can therefore now do so with their eyes open. The abortion lobby wants to bring the same extreme proposals they are recommending for Scotland to Westminster too: sex-selective abortion, up to birth, at the hands of healthcare professionals. Far from being progressive, this is barbaric and backwards, and should be rejected on both sides of the border.
