Amery - Beyond Pro-life and Pro-choice: The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain

BEYOND PRO-LIFE AND PRO-CHOICE

The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain

Fran Amery

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

Bristol University Press 2020

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Contents

I began this research at the University of Birmingham. I am particularly grateful to my supervisors, Stephen Bates and Nicola Smith, for their encouragement, especially in the uncertain first stages of the project, but also for their continued support and advice throughout my career. I would also like to thank Shelley Budgeon, Emma Foster and Laura Jenkins, who provided invaluable feedback at various stages of writing. At Birmingham I was also extremely lucky to be part of a large and welcoming doctoral research community comprised of Linda hll, Laurence Cooley, Drew Futter, Charlotte Galpin, Cherry Miller, Dave Norman, Jonna Nyman, Ken Searle, Liam Stanley, Ben Taylor and many others.

Beyond Birmingham, huge thanks are due Sarah Childs for her feedback and mentorship in the very early stages of my career. I would also like to thank all of the research participants who contributed their time to this project, in particular Abigail Fitzgibbon for her extremely helpful explanations and feedback. A substantial amount of research for the book was conducted in post at the University of Bath, and I am immensely appreciative of all my colleagues in the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies who provided a warm and supportive environment in which to undertake the project. Special thanks are due Peter Allen, Sophia Hatzisavvidou and David Moon for their feedback on later sections.

This research was funded in part by an Economic and Social Research Council studentship and a British Academy small grant. I am grateful to the funders for making the book possible. Finally, I could not have written this without the lifelong encouragement of my parents and my sister Carolyn (even if I am not a proper doctor). Fran Barer, thanks for being the truest friend anyone could have. Ian Evans and Jenny Heilig, thanks for making me smile always. Sammy Wernick: whatever life throws at us, I would not want to do it without you.

Available on demand an abortion if its a boy you wanted. This was the title of a February 2012 Daily Telegraph article reporting on a sting operation carried out by the newspaper. Telegraph journalists had visited multiple abortion clinics in Britain, posing as women requesting an abortion because of the sex of the foetus. The Daily Telegraph reported that its journalists decided to conduct the investigation after (unnamed) doctors, academics and pro-life campaigners all alleged that the procedure was being offered at specific organisations (Watt et al, ). The article claimed to have found two doctors working in private practices who were willing to authorize an illegal termination on the grounds of foetal sex alone. The clinics in question were subsequently reported to the police by the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley.

Although the Crown Prosecution Service ultimately decided not to prosecute either of the accused doctors, sex-selective abortion ballooned into a major political issue. The Telegraph article cited a 2007 study that showed a skewed sex ratio among children born to Indian-born women in England and Wales and suggested that this was evidence for sex-selective abortion occurring on a wide scale (Dubuc and Coleman, ). A particular concern was that women with migrant backgrounds might be forced into having abortions by family members if they were carrying a female foetus. In collaboration with South Asian womens campaign groups Jeena International and Karma Nirvana, the Conservative MP Fiona Bruce launched the Stop Gendercide campaign with the aim of ending the practice.

While the Daily Telegraph journalists only managed to secure two appointments in private clinics, and none with major charitable : 745).

It should be noted here that the legality of sex-selective abortion is contested. The law as it stands makes no mention of sex selection, allowing abortion before 24 weeks gestation in cases where two doctors have agreed that to continue the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman (Abortion Act, 1967: s1). In practice, this section of the Abortion Act 1967 is interpreted fairly widely; for example, while age is not an explicit legal ground for abortion, doctors might permit a teenager to have an abortion on the basis that, due to her young age, to carry the pregnancy to term might result in harm to her mental health. Stop Gendercide campaigners argue that sex selection is already illegal, as the sex of the foetus is not named as a legal ground for termination (although they campaign for the law to make this explicit). On the other hand, Ann Furedi, the chief executive of BPAS, suggested that sex selection is legal as long as the legal grounds for abortion are met if, for example, doctors believe that the woman requesting an abortion could come to harm were her family to discover that she was pregnant with a girl (Furedi, ).