I wrote about the appalling Oklahoma abortion law here; my friend Bryan has a fascinating interview with Christie Breedlove on the subject. A couple of pieces of good news follow after the interview. Firstly, the attorney-general of Okla. has, with the consent of both parties in litigation over the bill, delayed the coming into force [...]

Occasionally, you hear of a law that you do not just disagree with, but which can only be described as evil. The state of Oklahoma has just passed such a law. Not satisfied with the restrictions of Roe v Wade; not happy with a twenty-four hour waiting period; not content with having only three licensed [...]

The starting pistol is about to fire; as I type, the Queen is landing at Buckingham Palace in a helicopter. Manifestos are doubtless ready to be sent out, but the upcoming election will likely have a major effect on what is traditionally a matter of conscience on which the parties don’t take a position: abortion. [...]

Nadine Dorries MP has resubmitted her amendment to restrict abortion for the third reading of the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Bill which will take place tomorrow. All the amendments proposing restrictions were previously defeated. Via Cath Elliott, here is some information from the Abortion Rights Campaign on liberalising amendments, with particular reference to Northern Ireland, [...]

Via Stroppyblog, I see the Family Planning Association have set up a petition on the Number Ten site to extend the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland. The text reads: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to extend the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland, and grant women there the same rights to abortion [...]

One of Nadine Dorries’ most frequent lines in the debate around abortion has been that all religious people oppose abortion. This is clearly nonsense. The existence of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice gives the lie to that. It might just be possible to argue that the overwhelming preponderance of religious opinion is absolutely opposed [...]

Nadine Dorries MP (Conservative, Mid Beds) complains about the ‘deluge of liberalising amendments’ proposed by various MPs. Unfortunately, Ms Dorries is continuing in her wilful ignorance of, er, reality. Let’s clear up a minor point. Dorries says against the backdrop of statistics which show that we now have children aborting That is a misleading sentence. [...]

Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, says on her website1 that “The figures released this morning by the DoH show that there is a 23 per cent increase in abortions in girls under 14.” The figure for abortions for under-fourteens in 2006 and 2007 are 135 and 163 respectively (see Statistical Bulletin: Abortion Statistics, England [...]

One of the issues raised in the recent debate on abortion was that of viability. The argument proposed by the promoter of the 20-week amendment, Nadine Dorries MP, was that science had moved on in great bounds since the Abortion Act of 1961 to such an extent that births before twenty-four weeks could be ‘viable’; [...]

Despite the efforts of Nadine Dorries and some other MPs, the results of this evening’s votes in the Commons are positive. There has been no restriction on abortion rights and the discrimination against same-sex couples implicit in insisting on ‘the need for a father’ has been removed. I think that Dawn Primarolo has won some [...]