a vote for the Conservatives is, at least, a vote to restrict abortion to twenty-two weeks

The New Labour MP here in super-marginal Hove, Celia Barlow, voted to restrict abortion to twenty-two weeks. I take it returning her to office is A Bad Thing for women’s rights?

@Justin Yep. I’m prepared to accept that some sort of trade-off could be made in terms of having more women MPs and how she votes on other issues, but ceteris paribus, yes.

It is often forgotten that when abortion was deciminalised by the Steel Act in, IIRC, 1967, the “time period” was set by reference to the number of weeks a foetus had to be in order to be viable. Changes in medical technology have reduced this over the last forty-odd years. So the likes of Celia Barlow – irrespective of party label – can reasonably claim to be acting within the spirit of the original legislation.

The confusion has arisen, surely, because feminists have presented the Act as a major advance for women’s rights (which it was) whilst also continuing to press for the complete deregulation of abortion – for which the level of support depends on how the question is put. For the language itself is contested – “demand” is used by anti-abortionists and “choice” by those in favour of deregulating abortion.

The Steel Act attempted to draw a distinction between a fetus (which has no rights) and an unborn child (which has). That distinction may be illogical – I am far from sure that it is possible to take a logical position on this subject – but it has stood the test of time.

And right on cue Cameron’s being quoted all over the media now saying that the time limit for abortion should be cut to 20 or 22 weeks:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7091424.ece

The FT ran a news story by Chris Cook (who was a Tory adviser before becoming an FT leader writer) drawing on his magazine feature, this reported that ConHome surveys of parliamentary candidates suggest sufficient support for a restricted limit among new candidates to cut the limit
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cd2d124-1804-11df-91d2-00144feab49a.html

—
“One shadow cabinet member said: “We will, I am sure, have the votes we need to do it. It’s something lots of us feel very strongly about – including David [Cameron].”

This view is confirmed by surveys of Tory parliamentary candidates by ConservativeHome.com, combined with research by the FT. Abortion is a so-called “conscience” issue on which MPs are free to vote as they wish without being expected to toe a party line.

Tory MPs’ and candidates’ opposition to abortion is not, however, the result of deep religious convictions. Rather, one party adviser described the anti-abortion sentiment within the party as being an aspect of “right-wing political correctness. They think it goes with the package: pro-nuclear power, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-army, pro-life.”

–

@Cath Elliot

I hate to say I told you so

@Mike Killingworth – I sort of address that here.

Is there anyone else who finds it ironic that we’re being lectured by a man on womens’ rights?

@RedMaria

In fairness, I didn’t lecture. I didn’t actually give my position on abortion in the post; I did some basic stats. I merely said that it looks like a Conservative government will restrict abortion. For the record, I’m pro-choice and would oppose restricting abortion.

I would add that I don’t think my being a man disqualifies me from commenting on abortion.

[7, 8] I rather think that if I were an MP my heart/conscience would say that as a man I should not vote on the abortion issue. Whether this would be acceptable to the women activists in the constituency I’ve no idea.

[6] If the “artificial womb” were medically possible, it would become compulsory to do away with maternity leave.

And right on cue Cameron’s being quoted all over the media now saying that the time limit for abortion should be cut to 20 or 22 weeks:

I’m surprised he did that so brazenly. It looks like he’s desperate to court the ultra-conservative base.

We’re going to have a big fight on our hands when they win.

Red Maria – instead of making silly accusations, why don’t you just come out and state your opposition to abortion? I know its there, this pathetic attempt to try and undermine the author is a bit silly.

@ Dave Cole

In fairness, I didn’t lecture. I didn’t actually give my position on abortion in the post; I did some basic stats. I merely said that it looks like a Conservative government will restrict abortion. For the record, I’m pro-choice and would oppose restricting abortion.

Fairy nuff. Though your pro choice position was evident from the post’s headline onwards.

I don’t agree with you that a possible Tory administration would restrict abortion. Past Conservative governments have always declined to give their support to restrictive private members bills and I don’t think the Cameroonies have the stomach or interest in the matter to do anything different to their predecessors.

I would add that I don’t think my being a man disqualifies me from commenting on abortion.

Neither do I, as it happens. I just noted the irony in it, particularly since pro life males are not infrequently informed that the subject is none of their business.

@ Sunny: Oh come on, where’s your sense of humour? The sun’s shining, spring has sprung and you’re taking things oh so seriously. It wasn’t an accusation, see, just an throwaway comment. Reee-lax.

@RedMaria

I don’t agree with you that a possible Tory administration would restrict abortion.

Then why has Cameron called for the abortion limit to be lowered to twenty weeks?

Past Conservative governments have always declined to give their support to restrictive private members bills [...]

The amendments to the HF&E Bill in 2008 weren’t private members bills. In any case, I disagree with you on private members’ bills; I’m not sure how you’d define ‘restrictive’, but 251 PMBs were passed from 79 to 97 and only 65 from 97 to now.

[...]and I don’t think the Cameroonies have the stomach or interest in the matter to do anything different to their predecessors.

Really? See Sunder’s link above.

“[6] If the “artificial womb” were medically possible, it would become compulsory to do away with maternity leave.”

Only if you think maternity leave is related to having a womb.

Then why has Cameron called for the abortion limit to be lowered to twenty weeks?

I haven’t read the interview with him yet but it seems to me that he hasn’t so much called for the time limit to be reduced as expressed his personal view on the matter. He hasn’t promised anything or said that any government of his would do something about it. He’s trying to pick up a few religious votes. It’s as cynical as that.

The amendments to the HF&E Bill in 2008 weren’t private members bills. In any case, I disagree with you on private members’ bills; I’m not sure how you’d define ‘restrictive’, but 251 PMBs were passed from 79 to 97 and only 65 from 97 to now.

I wasn’t referring to the HFE Bill, the scope of my argument is more wide-ranging than that. Between 1967 and 1992 I believe that no fewer than 16 PMBs were introduced aiming to restrict the Abortion Act. None of these bills succeeded despite the fact that there were a majority of Conservative MPs in parliament between 1979 and 1997. The Conservative government of the 1980s declined the opportunity to provide time for restrictive abortion bills. I don’t anticipate that a potential Cameron government would behave any differently.

I’m presuming the “women whose rights will suffer” don’t include females in the womb.

Sunder Katwala – “one party adviser described the anti-abortion sentiment within the party as being an aspect of “right-wing political correctness. They think it goes with the package: pro-nuclear power, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-army, pro-life.””

Haven’t you heard of Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions ? Here’s Steven Pinker’s summary :

The Right-Left axis aligns an astonishing collection of beliefs that at first glance seem to have nothing in common. If you learn that someone is in favor of a strong military, for example, it is a good bet that the person is also in favor of judicial restraint rather than judicial activism. If someone believes in the importance of religion, chances are she will be tough on crime and in favor of lower taxes. Proponents of a laissez-faire economic policy tend to value patriotism and the family, and they are more likely to be old than young, pragmatic than idealistic, censorious than permissive, meritocratic than egalitarian, gradualist than revolutionary, and in a business rather than a university or government agency. The opposing positions cluster just as reliably: if someone is sympathetic to rehabilitating offenders, or to affirmative action, or to generous welfare programs, or to a tolerance of homosexuality, chances are good that he will also be a pacifist, an environmentalist, an activist, an egalitarian, a secularist, and a professor or student.

Why on earth should people’s beliefs about sex predict their beliefs about the size of the military? What does religion have to do with taxes? Whence the linkage between strict construction of the Constitution and disdain for shocking art? Before we can understand why beliefs about an innate human nature might cluster with liberal beliefs or with conservative beliefs, we have to understand why liberal beliefs cluster with other liberal beliefs and conservative beliefs cluster with other conservative beliefs…

The most sweeping attempt to survey the underlying dimension is Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions. Not every ideological struggle fits his scheme, but as we say in social science, he has identified a factor that can account for a large proportion of the variance. Sowell explains two “visions” of the nature of human beings that were expressed in their purest forms by Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the patron of secular conservatism, and William Godwin (1756-1836), the British counterpart to Rousseau. In earlier times they might have been referred to as different visions of the perfectibility of man. Sowell calls them the Constrained Vision and the Unconstrained Vision; I will refer to them as the Tragic Vision (a term he uses in a later book) and the Utopian Vision.

In the Tragic Vision, humans are inherently limited in knowledge, wisdom, and virtue, and all social arrangements must acknowledge those limits. “Mortal things suit mortals best,” wrote Pindar; “from the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing can be made,’ wrote Kant. The Tragic Vision is associated with Hobbes, Burke, Smith, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the philosophers Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper, and the legal scholar Richard Posner.

In the Utopian Vision, psychological limitations are artifacts that come from our social arrangements, and we should not allow them to restrict our gaze from what is possible in a better world. Its creed might be “Some people see things as they are and ask `why?’; I dream things that never were and ask `why not?”‘ The quotation is often attributed to the icon of 1960s liberalism, Robert F Kennedy, but it was originally penned by the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw (who also wrote, “There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough”).” The Utopian Vision is also associated with Rousseau, Godwin, Condorcet, Thomas Paine, the jurist Earl Warren, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and to a lesser extent the political philosopher Ronald Dworkin.

In the Tragic Vision, our moral sentiments, no matter how beneficent, overlie a deeper bedrock of selfishness. That selfishness is not the cruelty or aggression of the psychopath, but a concern for our well-being that is so much a part of our makeup that we seldom reflect on it and would waste our time lamenting it or trying to erase it…

In the Tragic Vision, moreover, human nature has not changed. Traditions such as religion, the family, social customs, sexual mores, and political institutions are a distillation of time-tested techniques that let us work around the shortcomings of human nature. They are as applicable to humans today as they were when they developed, even if no one today can explain their rationale. However imperfect society may be, we should measure it against the cruelty and deprivation of the actual past, not the harmony and affluence of an imagined future. We are fortunate enough to live in a society that more or less works, and our first priority should be not to screw it up, because human na?ture always leaves us teetering on the brink of barbarism. And since no one is smart enough to predict the behavior of a single human being, let alone millions of them interacting in a society, we should distrust any formula for changing society from the top down, because it is likely to have unintended consequences that are worse than the problems it was designed to fix. The best we can hope for are incremental changes that are continuously adjusted according to feedback about the sum of their good and bad consequences. It also follows that we should not aim to solve social problems like crime or poverty, because in a world of competing individuals one person’s gain may be another person’s loss. The best we can do is trade off one cost against another…

In the Utopian Vision, human nature changes with social circumstances, so traditional institutions have no inherent value. That was then, this is now. Traditions are the dead hand of the past, the attempt to rule from the grave. They must be stated explicitly so their rationale can be scrutinized and their moral status evaluated.

Your analysis seems to establish that the Conservatives are the most ardent defenders of the most basic womans right – the right not be killed. This right they share with their male counterparts. It is difficult to think of a more basic right than this.

It is a shame that the left are unwilling to defend the most deserving and vulnerable group in society i.e. the unborn child. This simple fact exposes the common myth that a vote for the left is symbolic of a social conscience or concern for the less fortunate. What could be more deserving of protection than an innocent child totally dependent on its mother for protection?

Furthermore, arguing for an absolute right to abortion, as a womans right, as you do here, gets you into dodgy territory. Are you seriously arguing that it is a sign of female emancipation when a girl is aborted because she is not a boy? However, if there is an absolute right to choose, as you assert, then this decision to kill girls because they are girls will be made in households across the nation due to your sanction. This is not a small point – the communities where this preference is most pronounced form a small but growing percentage of our population and have a higher than average birth rate.

This is the problem when you try to establish group rights distinct to those of humanity in general. Frequently they are established by degrading or destroying those of other groups in society e.g. the unborn child or those of humanity in general e.g. the right of the innocent to life.

[17] Glyn, either you aren’t a parent or else you aren’t a very good one. I can make no sense of the notion that either of my children became less deserving or less vulnerable by the act of being born.

Can you please confirm that you would like a practice (if not an actual law) requiring surgeons to save babies at the expense of their mothers?

I did not say they became less deserving when being born. I am not sure where you got this point from. I said it is indisputable that an unborn child is deserving. That is a different point. You should recognise that.

I do think that it makes quite obvious sense that an individual that has performed no acts has by judgement/definition not committed any sin or crime that means they should be denied their right to life. As we grow older the majority of humans fallible as we are will sometimes act in a way which is immoral or wrong so the position becomes less clear. People either have a right to life that is absolute or one dependent on their conduct. Both positions have some merit. However, each affords an innocent child a clear right to live.

I agree that the difference between a new born and a child in the womb is nothing. This is why I find your entire pro abortion case so bizarre. It rests on the right of a mother to abort a 24 week old child if it is in the womb but not a 22 week old child if it has been born. Your entire argument is based on the premise that a child in the womb is undeserving of a right to life in a way a born child is not. I make no such distinction.

I say this though I realise I am assuming you are not arguing that a mother should be able to kill her child born or not until 24 weeks? If I am incorrect in my understanding then I would ask someone to call childrens services because you have revealed a rather too liberal attachment to your childrens right to life. This should worry any right thinking person. I think you do need to explain the following: why is a child less deserving of societies protection by the simple fact that it is in the mothers womb irrespective of its ability to feel pain or its level of development?

It is a widely accepted view that children are more deserving of societies protection. This is based on two notions – the apparent innocence of children and their greater vulnerability which in turn engenders greater emphasis on protection.
This is shown by the greater repulsion when any child is attacked as against when an adult is attacked in the same way.

In terms of the mother v the child right to life we would be dealing with competing rights to life. This is very different to the right of one individual to life v the right of another to kill them. I see no reason to denigrate mothers who choose to sacrifice themselves for their children nor to suggest that they should. I do not see how this in any way relates to a healthy mother seeking to abort a healthy child. I cannot understand how you can extrapolate an absolute right to abort out of the unfortunate circumstance of having to choose between two human lives.

To put it more simply – I believe in the right of the innocent to life. Children do not become less deserving as a result of their birth. However, each individual is capable of losing the right to life when they begin to act because their actions could be sufficient to warrant the ultimate sanction. In short – life for the innocent child and death for the child rapist murderer makes sense. It makes far more sense than your position which apparently is possible death for the innocent child and an absolute right to life for a child rapist murderer.

[20] I know full well you don’t think for yourself when it comes to these matters. Oh, I’m sorry – you do: the Pope is against capital punishment.

Have you written to him to tell him he’s wrong, and if not why not?

@ 18 “Can you please confirm that you would like a practice (if not an actual law) requiring surgeons to save babies at the expense of their mothers?”

Until the 1960s, the expectation was that if only one could be saved, it would be the baby. Which if you think about makes the most adaptive sense.
Because of medical advances such situations are thankfully rare and I think in practice, doctors would follow the wishes of next of kin. It’s a matter of ethics, rather than law.

Mike I am not Catholic so what the Pope thinks about these matters does not really affect my argument either way. I also think people should try to deal with the substance of other peoples arguments rather than descending into anti Catholic jibes. If I were Catholic it would not make my argument any more or less worthy. Also given this site is left leaning I would have thought you would be wanting to reassure Catholic voters – of which there are millions in the UK – rather than denigrate them and their religious leader.

Furthermore, if you actually read my argument you will see that I have said that there are two views that can form the basis of a right to life – one that it is absolute (the Pope’s view) and the other that it is dependent on conduct (my view). Where both groups agree is on cases where individuals cannot possibly have acted in a way to impair/remove their right to life i.e. the innocent unborn child – they cannot in any way have acted to remove their right to life so both groups agree they have a right to life.

I do recognise that there are of course differences on how an absolute right is derived and what actions justify taking life if you think the right to life is conditional. However, the point remains that either people have an absolute right to life or a right dependent on their conduct. That is if such a right to life exists and I believe it does.

[23] I don’t care how you chop your logic. The reality is that to believe that the unborn have more rights than the born is a position which can only be held by someone following a religious dogma or an idiot.

The problem with a belief that the right to life depends on conduct is simply this: who is to decide what conduct merits death? In practice this simply comes down to the exercise of power. Not that practical considerations have any sway in your bizarre world.

I don’t say the unborn have more rights than the born. You should actually read my responses. I say that I disagree with the notion that the born have sufficiently more rights than the unborn that they can choose to violate the right of the unborn to life. There is no more basic right than the right to life – if you strip the unborn of that you are saying they have no rights at all. I disagree with this.

You really should stop implying a religious basis to my views when I have not mentioned God and religion anywhere in this debate. It is a strange feature of the left that you campaign for the removal of religion from public debate and then in debates like this you descend to an argument of – oh you must be religious so your views don’t count. Your anti religious prejudice is really quite ugly and silly. You should engage with the arguments made.

I think that when individuals have committed a crime they are entitled as of right to a fair trial and public provision for their defence. However, given we are a society of laws society assumes both a right to prohibit certain acts and apply sanction based on someones conduct. Were this not the case we would be in a state of anarchy. The sanctions that could be applied could include the death penalty. The individual would be free to prevent themselves being subject to this penalty by not performing the action that warrants this sentence. Unborn children have not the same freedom – under your system their lives depend on the relatively arbitrary fact of whether their parents want them or not.

[25] OK, let me just ask you one more question? You believe that our society is wrong not to apply the death penalty. Fair enough, a lot of people do.

One argument that has swayed abolitionists – in some US states – is that in applying the death penalty there is always a risk of inflicting more pain than is necessary. Presumably those who argued that way thought that although some people’s actions might be so appalling that they forefeited the right to life no one could ever behave so badly as to deserve to die slowly and painfully at the hands of the State.

FWIW the reason I oppose the death penalty is (i) that there is always the slim chance that the person is wrongly convicted – there have been several high profile examples of just that and (ii) it would be necessary, since one cannot plan for all contingencies in advance, to allow for the “prerogative of mercy” – given contemporary media pressure, the exercise of such prerogative would immediately become chaotic.

However, I am curious as to your standards. Should the Italians have hanged Amanda Knox?

I think our society should have the option of applying the death penalty and that the circumstances under which we should apply it should be debated. My own preference is not to inflict more pain than is necessary. I would also apply the penalty in a restricted number of cases such as cases of multiple murder or child murder in particular but don’t have a confirmed view on where the line would be drawn yet. I am currently undecided on this point. Clearly though there would need to be a firm line were such a law passed.

The possibility of making a mistake is present in all human acts because we are not omniscient or indeed infallible – with the possible exception of the Pope in the latter case (in the view of Catholic readers). I have always thought though that unless you are a pacifist/quaker it is very difficult to argue against the death penalty on the basis that the state cannot allow the possibility of human error in making decisions over life and death. If you have ever approved of a war then you will have supported action that is likely to have killed innocents.

Your views on the death penalty seem quite reasonable but I am not sure how supporting someones right to kill a child on purpose fits with opposition to the states ability to kill a suspected though innocent murderer by accident. I am not sure on the Knox case becuase I don’t know the full facts and these decisions really should be made by courts on a case by case basis. Now I am afraid I am going to get a beer. Have a nice weekend.

Is it not the case that many of the babies killed in abortion are female?

What about those women’s rights to live?

Once an egg is fertilised, it is immediately a viable life form. How can people not see this?

Disgusted.