Left Unity Women’s Caucus: Pass the baton of freedom – demand safe, free and unrestricted access to abortion

by Kerry Abel

Left Unity Women’s Caucus stands in solidarity with our sisters in the Spanish State! ¡Por el aborto libre y gratuito!

The following is the talk given by Kerry Abel on the 11th of May at an event co-sponsored by Left Unity Women’s Caucus, “Abortion Rights” and “My Belly is Mine.”

Thank you for inviting me. I’ve been on the executive of Abortion Rights for about 6 years and I’m the Secretary. I’m also a trade union organiser and I was elected recently to the Left Unity NC. I am also a member of the Left Unity Women’s Caucus.

Abortion Rights campaign to defend and extend women’s rights and access to safe, legal abortion.

We oppose any attack on the 1967 Abortion Act and that includes attacking access by restrictions or reduction of services, any delays or barriers that might be put in place and attacks in the media that seek to stigmatise those accessing abortion advice and services.

A consistent three quarters of people support a woman’s right to choose in Britain. We believe the law should be brought into line with public opinion – so that women can make their own reproductive decisions without the current unfair legal barriers, obstructions and delays.

Abortion Rights was formed in 2003 by the merger of the two long-standing and influential campaigns – the National Abortion Campaign (NAC) and the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA).

I’m going to talk about why taking up the struggle to defend and extend abortion rights is important, some of the threats and talk a bit about what and how we’re doing this at Abortion Rights.

Why it’s important

It’s about control over our bodies.

This is a human right, the opposite of pro-choice isn’t pro-life; the opposite of pro-choice is forced motherhood.

Unfortunately we don’t have 100% perfect contraception and also life isn’t always that simple. A study published by Marie Stopes released a couple of weeks ago, showing research into women aged 16-24 having one or more abortions revealed that more than half (57%) of young women who have abortions were using contraception when they fell pregnant
• The majority were using short-term methods, such as the pill (54%) or condoms (40%)
• 12% of women had used emergency contraception (and we know there are postcode lotteries for access to the morning after pill, with physicians being able to conscientiously object to providing this service)
• 28% of women had had one or more previous abortions, and the older a women is, the more likely she is to have more than one abortion
• Uptake of contraception at four weeks post-abortion was extremely high at 86%, but 67% used their chosen method for less than a year. Reasons for stopping included menstrual irregularities for long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) and not renewing supply in time for pills and injections.

I say this not to try to justify young women’s choices for abortion – because that’s their choice and the only person that can truly decide what to do is the woman in that circumstance, but to show that there is a need for timely and accessible abortion provision, because with the best of intentions, these things happen. Even if a pregnancy was planned, things happen that would change the woman’s mind and all of these reasons mean that we need safe and free abortions on demand.

Because banning abortion doesn’t prevent abortion, it just prevents safe abortion.
It’s worth reminding ourselves of the situation we had in Britain before the 1967 Abortion Act: Accurate figures for women injured by illegal abortion before 1967 are not available, as many women would not admit that their injuries resulted from abortion for fear of incriminating themselves and the illegal abortionist. In 1959, however, it was estimated by a parliamentary committee that the treatment of abortion accounted for as many as 20% of gynaelogical admissions within the NHS. In 1966 the Home Office estimated that 100,000 abortions were being carried out each year. Other estimates put this figure at 150,000.

Widespread injury and infection often led to infertility and other permanent health problems, and death by septicaemia (blood poisoning) or haemorrhage (bleeding) was not uncommon. In 1966 up to 40 women a year in the UK died from the complications of unsafe abortion.

Unsafe abortion was the second biggest cause of maternal death and ill health.

It’s about class

Abortion becomes an issue about class and poverty very quickly and moves away from simple moral decisions. We were very aware that before abortion was legal in 1967 abortions still took place, and if you were richer, you had more chance of surviving. They were able to travel, get a hotel, pay for all the extras and do it quickly.

One of the ways that they are highlighting this in Spain, the Coordinadora Española para el Lobby Europeo de Mujeres (CELEM) have set up a fictional travel agency called Travel Abortion headquarters, “the agency that should never exist” and it highlights where women can travel, but also how much it costs (between 1000-6000 euros).
It’s exactly the same for women in Ireland north and south, they pay for the clinic, the flights and their accommodation. In 2011, there were 6,151 abortions to women resident outside England and Wales. Principally, these non-residents were from Northern Ireland (16%) and the Irish Republic (67%). (DoH statistics 2012)

There was an increase in funding to the NHS from the late 90s onwards, and now, the majority of abortions (96%) are funded by the NHS. This is extremely positive, it’s a major factor to enable a woman to make the choice she wants to make. This is not the case in the USA for example, where people have to save up for their terminations and the cost goes up the longer they have to wait because the procedure gets more complicated.
And when you have to pay, you don’t always get to choose when and how. The procedure for abortion gets more expensive the longer you leave it, so those who have to save up are hit with a double whammy.

Abortion Support Network, which organises places to stay for women coming over, mostly from Ireland said, the girl in NI’s test case found herself in exactly that pinch of escalating costs when she became pregnant in 2012:

A 15-year-old girl worked up the courage to tell her mother she was pregnant. Her mother fed the family beans on toast for a week to save an extra £50. The abortion cost £350, plus the charge for the mandated consultation, plus travel. By the time they had raised the money, the young girl was 15 weeks pregnant and the price had been pushed up to £600 for just the procedure. She also had to pay to get a photo ID in order to travel.

Abortion Rights response to NI women not entitled to free abortions in England

It is deeply disappointing that the High Court has ruled that women from Northern Ireland are not legally entitled to abortions provided by the NHS in England because women from Northern Ireland are not covered by the 1967 Abortion Act. This is yet another obstacle put in the way of women who make the decision to terminate a pregnancy from obtaining a safe legal abortion. An unjust law has been used to justify an unfair ban on women accessing NHS services. The cost of travelling to the UK for women from Northern Ireland is in itself prohibitive, with the cost of travel, accommodation and obtaining a private abortion estimated at £400 – £2000. NHS provision of sexual health and abortion services is already woefully inadequate in England with over half of terminations carried out in private clinics under NHS contracts, and a quarter of all women paying for private terminations due to the waiting time for an abortion through the NHS. Yet this doesn’t have to be the case, in Scotland almost all abortions take place under the NHS. For women, this postcode lottery of the right to determine what happens to our bodies belongs to the bygone era of paternalism. It’s time for our politicians to stand up for the prochoice majority. Over 75% of people agree with a woman’s right to choose an abortion and we will not be bullied or intimidated by a small vocal minority of anti abortion zealots. It is time to decriminalise abortion and give women who live in Northern Ireland the right to access services including abortion as part of wider sexual and reproductive healthcare services. It is also time to end the postcode lottery of NHS abortion services and require the NHS to provide safe legal abortions wherever we live, while women should have the right to choose and pay for an abortion privately, all women who want to do so should be able to access abortion services funded by the NHS.

Abortion needs to be a choice and we work with all types of women and those with wombs to remove the challenges to them being able to make the decision they want to make. I haven’t got enough time to go into this, but it cuts across so many other discriminations that women face, and judgments made about those in certain circumstances.

We have learned that above all, the only person who should choose is the person in the situation; it just boils down to trusting women.

The trade unions in Britain are amongst the strongest and most reliable supporters of abortion rights in Britain – because they know that this is a working woman’s issue. Reproductive rights have transformed the working lives of women as well as allowing immeasurable educational and social benefits for women.

What we are doing to defend and extend a women’s right to choose

We have been very concerned about the current political climate and the austerity agenda. We know that whether directly or not, this affects women’s choice and access to services.

Left Unity has a clear position on the cuts and we wholeheartedly agree. Any threat to education , health and services, particularly affecting women are ones that we speak up on and stand alongside activists.

Abortion Rights was very proud to be a founder organisation of the Women’s Assembly Against Austerity and our members are active in campaigns to save the NHS, to changes in education and for trade union initiatives.

We are concerned that *any* cuts to the NHS will leak out in some way to affect women’s choice. Any ‘backroom’ NHS cuts mean that healthcare professionals end up doing admin, this will mean that they can carry out fewer procedures or it takes longer for someone who is referred by their GP to be seen. That’s very simple, but it’s inevitable.
The Daily Telegraph (!) reported in January 2014 that of all 145 hospital trusts in England that 44% expect to end the year in deficit – with a combined “black hole” of more than £330 million between them.

When you’re talking about abortion, delays to having your termination are very important. For a start, you need to get two doctors to sign off on your abortion, the single only medical procedure that requires this – you don’t even need two doctors to sign off on your brain surgery – If you unwittingly see an anti-choice GP (most GP’s are very supportive of a women’s right to choose) but 18% said in a Marie Stopes 2007 survey that they were anti-abortion and out of those doctors who are ‘broadly anti-abortion’ 35% disagreed that a doctor should declare their objection to abortion to a patient.

That doctor might not refer you properly or give you misleading advice. Then if services don’t exist in your area, so you have to travel, or the waiting list is just long, so you have to wait – that waiting can tip you over into a more complicated surgical procedure which could affect your health. I’m glad to say most abortions (around 90%) are carried out before a pregnancy reaches 13 weeks, which means that it’s two abortion pills and therefore more safe than a surgical procedure, but if cuts get worse, this may change.

Challenging the Americanisation of anti-choice groups and stealth campaigning

We have noticed that since the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill when Nadine Dories and others inserted anti-choice amendments into a Parliamentary debate that was essentially nothing about abortion and we responded with submitting pro-choice abortion extension amendments, and for the first time since 1989 MPs were forced to vote on abortion there’s been a slight shift in anti-choice tactics.

Apart from a few outliers (Dorries) there are few public figures who are prepared to have this debate in the media or in Parliament where they would have to provide medical evidence or statistics or evidence of popular opinion, so instead the campaigning is getting a lot dirtier and they are focussing on individual women outside clinics, by getting in their way, whispering to them as they walk into the clinic and by showing hideous, sometimes misleading and inaccurate visuals of foetues and abortion. This is no doubt an Americanisation of their strategies and we should be vigilant.

In Britain we are seeing the increasing ‘Americanisation’ of anti-choice tactics, with groups such as Abort67 (named after the year the Abortion Act was introduced and women in Britain were able to access safe, legal abortions) and40 Days for Life picketing and praying outside abortion clinics displaying provocative images and boasting about the women they turned away on their blogs. They are choosing to focus on women – often extremely vulnerable women – at clinics rather than involve themselves in evidence based discussions in the media or in Parliament.

Nadine Dorries and other anti choice MPs have consistently attempted to use the time limit discussion as a tactic to draw the debate towards more restrictive abortion laws and increased barriers in the way of women accessing terminations generally. The current time limit in England, Wales and Scotland stands at 24 weeks in most circumstances. Later term abortions are rare, fewer than 2% of terminations occur after 20 weeks, but these are often the most vulnerable women in difficult situations.

We have been clear in Abortion Rights that we can’t accept one restriction that leads to the overall undermining of access and right to abortion, that’s what I think attacks on the time limit, on counselling, on health cuts, on creating ‘wedges’ amongst us over sex-selection and about when a doctor signs a form. We must be clear that the people pushing these points are against abortion full stop, but they use these points in the media and to squeeze the legislation to make it difficult for ordinary women to take up their legal and medical right to a safe termination without stigma.

It is true that the abortion debate is much worse in the USA, but this should stand as a warning to pro-choice activists in Britain that if we are not vigilant, where America leads Britain often follows.

Abortion is not discussed, we know that in their lifetime, 1/3 women will have an abortion. However there are few representations of this common occurrence in film or TV, where it is covered in the media it is often to make points about something else – irresponsible women, the state of the economy etc (I say this as someone who deals with journalists asking for case-studies or telling me the ‘angles’ they want to use).
We believe that this is bad for a society that passes laws, educates children and makes healthcare decisions about funding if there isn’t a proper, well informed debate by people who are actually affected.

I’ve also noted (and I read anti-choice blogs so you don’t have to!) that there’s an attempt to philosophise the issue of abortion. For example a Facebook thread was asked to ‘just take the woman out of the equation for a moment and consider when life really starts’.

I wanted to make a quick point about the impact of religion. I have to say that this really tends to be coming from small, fringe religious organisations. They are connected to one or two churches, so we should be aware that this isn’t a mainstream thing.
Research from last year by You Gov showed that there was a clear dividing line between the teachings of the various religious bodies and the lived reality of those that followed those religions.

A YouGov poll for the ‘Westminster Faith Debates‘ and reported in The Guardian found there was no marked difference between the views of people with religious affiliations and everybody else. It found the percentage of the population wanting a ban has fallen from 12% in 2005 to 7% today. The survey found support for keeping the current limit on terminations has risen by a third to a clear majority of 57%. It was found that factors such as gender, age and voting preference did not make much difference to attitudes on abortion.

Among those identifying with a religion, 43% were in favour of keeping or raising the 24-week limit, compared with 46% of the general population. 30% percent wanted to see it lowered (compared with 28% while 9% supported a ban (compared with 7%). Of the religious people who were surveyed, Catholics, Muslims and Baptists are the most hostile to abortion, but only half said that they wanted to see the law changed.
Attacks have been ideological, it’s definitely not about saving money, the raids of 580 inspections cost £1m and the FPA’s report Unprotected Nation outlines how cuts to sexual health services will actually result in more unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, increasing the UK’s future health and welfare expenditure by 8.7%.

Working with as many people as possible and making sure our campaign is relevant to as many communities as possible: Black women; disabled women; students & young people; healthcare professionals; trade unions and working women. It is important not to create divisions in our campaign and that we reflect and represent the views of all women and those with wombs.

Statement on disability and abortion

Abortion Rights believes that all women, including disabled women, have the right to make their own reproductive choices. All women have the right to choose abortion for whatever reason. No woman should be persuaded to either terminate, or carry a pregnancy to term, whatever her situation and whether or not the fetus shows signs of impairment. The decision of any woman to have an abortion for reasons of impairment is hers alone and should be respected.

Abortion Rights fully supports the rights of disabled people, and supports the work of the disability rights movement to bring about recognition of their dignity and human rights and to change society for the fullest participation of disabled people. Abortion Rights recognises that we live in a society which discriminates against and devalues disabled people and that disabled women are denied real choice because of prejudice and discrimination in society.

Abortion Rights accepts the social model of disability advocated by the disability rights movement, which distinguishes between impairments and the disabling impact of these impairments depending on how society is organised and the barriers that exist to disabled people.

Improving and extending the right for women to choose, improving the law

It’s a complete anachronism in my view that abortion is still in the criminal code and that women can go to prison for making a choice about what to do with their bodies and that their reasons/motives are second guessed. Abortion Rights wants to launch a campaign to end the criminalisation of abortion in Britain and we want to see a modern abortion law fit for women in the 21st century.

Why women need a modern abortion law and better services

Current law out of step with public opinion

Control over whether, when and how many children to have is crucial to control over every other aspect of a woman’s life. An overwhelming three quarters of people in Britain support a woman’s right to make her own abortion decision.

Current law gives doctors a veto over women’s decisions

In Britain, abortion is not legally available at the request of the woman. After a woman has decided that she wants to end her pregnancy, she has to persuade two doctors to agree to her decision on the basis of restrictive legal criteria.
This requirement is not only paternalistic, but more damagingly, it allows the approximately one in ten doctors who are opposed to all abortion the opportunity to delay, obstruct or even veto women’s decisions.

There is no legal requirement for doctors to declare their conscientious objection to abortion but professional guidelines require that they do refer a woman on to another doctor immediately. Abortion Rights hears from women who’s anti-choice doctors, instead of declaring their objection and referring them on, have wrongly told them that they are too late, that they have lost their pregnancy test results, that they are not entitled to an NHS abortion, that abortion is murder or who have refused to refer them to another GP. This is unacceptable. It is time for a modern law – where women not doctors made the abortion decision, like every other medical procedure.

Rights for the women of Northern Ireland

The British abortion law was never extended to Northern Ireland and women there still don’t have access to safe legal abortion.

With the developments in the peace process in Northern Ireland and the re-establishment of the institutions, it is time women there had their own rights to abortion.

Unacceptable delays in service provision

There is no law requiring the NHS to provide abortion services. Levels of funding for NHS service provision have increased over the past 10 years, but waiting lists still vary across Britain resulting in a ‘postcode lottery’ of delays.

The Department of Health has set a target for delays of no longer than three weeks. No government figures are published on waiting times but research conducted by the All Party Pro-choice and Sexual Health group showed that 27 per cent of Primary Care Trusts delayed women beyond three weeks.

In Abortion Rights’ March 2007 opinion poll, 72 per cent said it was not acceptable for a woman who had been referred for an abortion to have to wait beyond three weeks for the procedure. Its time these delays ended.

This is where you come in. Unlike other well funded anti-choice groups, we don’t get money from churches or wealthy donors. We rely on subscriptions from our members and affiliates, and this takes a lot of work. If I could make one plea to you, it would be to join Abortion Rights yourself and also take it to your trade union branch or student union etc. At least 75% of people support a women’s right to choose, higher among trade unionists and you would be pleasantly surprised at the response you get when you raise the prospect of supporting us.

The other question, is about the political framework. We need to put ourselves in a position where the media and politicians understand and can feel emboldened that the public support choice because at the moment Parliament and the media is behind the curve of British public opinion. In order to be in a position of strength to argue for a modern abortion law, we need to education and shape public opinion.
Abortion Rights has cross party support in parliament (from surprising places!) but even our supporters are nervous about their constituents. We want to be in a position that MPs know what the strength of feeling is about choice – so please tell your MPs. We believe that the media will follow suit when these common sense views are put.

Unfortunately the stories told now are sensationalised and scandalised. We are fundraising so that we can do research into the real public perceptions and the real situations people are in. We want to frame and shape the debate from where people are really at and use this research to have more accurate public debates. We think that’s possible now. The Newsnight programme from January was a sensible, well thought out piece of journalism, but we need ten more of those opportunities before we’ll really get there, but we’re prepared to do that. And our activists on the ground, taking part in street stalls and counter-actions (not counter protests) when groups picket women at clinics are telling us what a good response they are getting. Many new activists have got involved because they have been horrified by the shaming and direct approach to influencing women’s opinions.

Please make your voices heard, on social media, to your trade unions, to your MPs and please join Abortion Rights.

Thank you