Firstly, the attorney-general of Okla. has, with the consent of both parties in litigation over the bill, delayed the coming into force of HB2780 by forty-five days.

Secondly, the Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging the constitutionality of HB2780. Evidently, a similar provision was struck down last year after two years in the courts. The only problem I have with the legal challenge is the provision under which it falls (and I recognise that this is a question of legal expediency):

The Center argues that the ultrasound requirement profoundly intrudes upon a patient’s privacy and is the most extreme ultrasound law in the country.

I don’t think it’s so much as invasion of privacy as an invasion of body: making access to one’s rights dependent on having a vaginal ultrasound is tantamount to rape.

xD.

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 abortion clinics in the state, the Oklahoma legislature has passed a law that aims to make abortion as traumatic as possible.

• A woman who wants an abortion must have an ultrasound.
• The ultrasound must be conducted vaginally.
• The visual from the ultrasound must be placed where the woman can see it.The doctor must describe in detail what is on the screen – organs, limbs, etc.
• A doctor who refuses to do this can be sued by the family.
• There are no exemptions for rape or incest

The text of the bill, House Bill 2780 can be found as an RTF on the Oklahoma State Legislature’s website. The Governor of Oklahoma, Brad Henry, vetoed the bill but the veto was overturned by the legislature.

xD.

While the political parties don’t officially have a line, it is clear that the Conservatives are more in favour of restricting abortion than Labour. The LibDems are somewhere in between. Based on the 2008 votes on abortion in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, and making the assumption that the votes of the parties in the Parliament that is now ending is a good guide to the same in the next Parliament, we can say that the probability of a Conservative MP voting to restrict abortion from twenty-four to twenty-two weeks is 0.83; for Labour, the figure is 0.2; for the LibDems, 0.42.

I am taking the figures from the Public Whip for the votes for 22, 20, 16 and 12 weeks.

This gives:

If we use the UK Polling Report’s current average (38 Conservative, 30 Labour, 20 LibDem) and the Baxter Election Predictor, we can use the figures above to calculate the expected vote in favour of restricting.

In the new Parliament, there will be six hundred and fifty MPs, so the magic number is 325. Based on these figures, it seems there is a very good chance that, should there be a vote on the matter, abortion would be restricted to twenty-two weeks.

This does not include, however, the effect of the other parties. On these figures, another 45 votes would be needed to restrict abortion to twenty weeks; there are only thirty-one seats unaccounted for in my figures, and based on the 2008 votes, you would expect around twenty of those votes to go for restricting abortion. However, given that these are small parties (in some cases, parties of one) I don’t think it’s a safe extrapolation to make. Nevertheless, only a small deviation from the figures above, if the incoming Parliament happens to have a few more people in favour of restricting abortion to twenty weeks, would result in a majority for that restriction. The gap for further restriction seems insurmountable.

While it is not party policy, and while there are Labour MPs in favour of restricting abortion and Conservatives against, in general a vote for the Conservatives is, at least, a vote to restrict abortion to twenty-two weeks and possibly to twenty weeks.

xD.

Further to this comment from Kate Belgrave, the blog of Dave Cole is pleased to present a selection of posts from Liberal Conspiracy concerning abortion.

Northern Ireland women speak on their fight for abortion rights
Report from 7 October Abortion Rights lobby
Report from 7 October Abortion Rights lobby
Has Gordon Brown shagged us all with an anti abortion deal with the DUP?
LC work on Nadine Dorries hypocrisy makes news
Sins of Omission – delusions of the anti choice lobby
Gearing up for report stage of Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill
LC complaint against Nadine Dorries upheld
Saving women’s lives with Sarah Palin

xD.

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 as women in the rest of the United Kingdom.

More details from petition creator

We believe that the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly should extend the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland, and grant women there the same rights to abortion as women in the rest of the United Kingdom.

As the law currently stands, no woman in Northern Ireland with an unwanted pregnancy (including women who’ve been raped, victims of incest, diagnosed with fetal abnormality/disability) has the automatic right to abortion.

Consequently, Northern Irish women:

• Pay the emotional and financial costs (up to £2,500) and travel to England or overseas for a private abortion.

• Have babies they have already decided they don’t want.

• Buy illegal and unsafe abortion pills on the internet in desperation.

fpa believes Parliament should change the law to end the discrimination against Northern Ireland women and give them the right to choose.

I encourage you to sign the petition. In many areas of sexual rights, Northern Ireland remains a long way behind the rest of the UK. This is the region, after all, that manages to have Iris Robinson as a Member of its Legislative Assembly and return her as a Westminster MP.

xD.

The ever-informative Prospect magazine, in its ‘News & Curiosities’ column, has this factoid, attributed to Between the Monster and the Saint by Richard Holloway:

Catholics believe that the soul comes into existence at the exact moment of conception. In Greek Orthodoxy, “ensoulment” happens at 21 days, in Islam at 40 days, and in Judaism at 80 days.

The creation or incarnation of the soul is one of the bases of religious objections. Although the picture is rather more complicated than this – see my post of [date] on – I’m just glad that something with a bigger readership than me has noticed that religions don’t conform to certain preconceptions!

I’m sorry to bang on about this. Actually, I’m not at all sorry. I just hope I don’t become tedious. I am increasingly convinced that, should the Conservative Party win the next general election, there will be restrictions placed on abortion. Much of Ms Dorries’ opposition is based on her telegraphic memory¹ and I fear the small-c conservative, religious movement may also seek to make retrograde steps elsewhere.

xD.

1 – she makes it up…

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. The key word is ‘now’; this is nothing new. I showed (using clever sums and everything!) that there is no statistically significant rise in the number of abortions by people under sixteen. To say that ‘we now have children aborting’ suggests a recent change or, at any rate, a change. There is no evidence for that.

Moving on, the deluge is somewhat misleading. Below the fold you can find, by MP and date, all the amendments proposed by Evan Harris, John Bercow and Nadine Dorries to the HF&E Bill. Of the three MPs, Evan Harris has submitted the great bulk of the amendments. Very many of them deal with relatively technical details and the like; almost all deal with developments in fertilisation and embryology. No great surprise, there, as we are talking about the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Bill.

Ms Dorries has no comeback when people wish to amend the Bill to liberalise abortion; it was she who took the Bill beyond its original purposes with her amendments to restrict abortion.

I think the amendments tabled by both men amount to a form of legislative abuse of women. They display no care or attention to the effects of abortion on women and a complete disregard towards any moral direction of our young people.

I could, of course, say that the amendments tabled by Ms Dorries (her sex being largely irrelevant) amount to a form of legislative abuse of women by stripping them of rights over their own bodies. When Dorries talks about a lack of care and attention, I presume she is moving forward to this passage in her post:

His [Bercow's] amendment seeks to criminalise any doctor of conscience who provides counselling or guidance to any woman seeking an abortion, with two years imprisonment.

Fortunately, it is such an outrageous amendment which would almost certainly result in the imprisonment of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and Hindu GPs everywhere, that the Speaker is very unlikely to accept it.

I read it differently. I think it says that doctors should be doctors, not proselytisers. If (say) a Jehovah’s Witness were to become a surgeon, would we allow them to refuse to administer blood transfusions? If a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster were to become a psychiatrist, would we allow them to Talk Like a Pirate on September 19th? As I and Unity have said before, Dorries’ arguments about absolute religious objections to abortion are weak.

If we are allowed a debate on restricting abortion, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have one on liberalising abortion. I’d add that liberalising abortion doesn’t necessarily mean raising the twenty-four week limit; it can mean making it easier to have an abortion up to (say) fourteen weeks.

xD.

Amendments submitted by Dorries

20^th May 2008

NC3

To move the following Clause:—

‘In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (c. 87) (medical termination of pregnancy), for “twenty-fourth week” substitute “sixteenth week”.’.

NC5

To move the following Clause:—

‘In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (c. 87) (medical termination of pregnancy), for “twenty-fourth week” substitute “twentieth week”.’.

2 July 2008

NC6

To move the following Clause:—

‘(1) The Abortion Act 1967 (c. 87) is amended as follows.

(2) After section 1(1)(d) insert—

“( ) In section 1(1)(d) the term “seriously handicapped” does not include club foot, cleft lip, cleft palate or cleft lip and palate”’.

Amendments submitted by Bercow

4^th July

NC11

To move the following Clause:—

‘(1) The Abortion Act 1967 (c. 87) is amended as follows.

(2) After section 4 insert—

“Prohibition of deliberately misleading advertising

(1) It shall be an offence to deliberately mislead through advertising in relation to the termination of pregnancy and alternatives thereto.

(2) Any person, association or body corporate shall be guilty of an offence under subsection (1) if—

(a) they provide information or advice, whether for reward or otherwise, to a pregnant woman about termination of pregnancy or the alternatives thereto, and

(b) they advertise the services they provide under paragraph (a) through material which—

(i) contains false information and is untruthful in relation to any of the matters in subsection (3), or

(ii) in its overall presentation deceives or is in any way likely to deceive the average person in relation to any of the matters in that subsection, even if the information is factually correct; and

(c) the material under paragraph (b) causes or is likely to cause the average pregnant woman to take a decision in relation to the termination of her pregnancy she would not have taken otherwise.

(3) The matters referred to in subsection (2)(b) are—

(a) that the person, association or body corporate concerned—

(i) provides services authorised under this Act, or

(ii) provides information about how to obtain services authorised under this Act, when it does not provide such services or such information.

(b) information about how to obtain services authorised under this Act.

(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—

(a) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum; or

(b) on conviction on indictment, to a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or both.”’.

Amendments submitted by Harris

19 May 2008

31

Clause 11, page 8, line 21, leave out subsection (1) and insert—

‘(1) Section 11 of the 1990 Act (licences for treatment, storage and research) is amended as follows—

(a) in the title, for “and research” substitute “, research and therapy”.

(b) in subsection (1)(b), for “and embryos” substitute “, embryos or human admixed embryos”; and

(c) after subsection (1)(c) add—

“(d) licences under paragraph 3B of that Schedule authorising activities for the purposes of therapy”.’.

24

Schedule 2, page 55, line 14, leave out from ‘a’ to ‘that’ in line 15 and insert ‘harmful gene, combination of genes, chromosome or mitochondrion’.

25

Schedule 2, page 55, line 18, leave out from ‘any’ to ‘establishing’ in line 19 and insert ‘harmful gene, combination of genes, chromosome or mitochondrion’.

26

Schedule 2, page 55, line 19, leave out second ‘abnormality’ and insert ‘genotype’.

27

Schedule 2, page 55, line 20, leave out from ‘other’ to end of line 21 and insert ‘harmful gene, combination of genes, chromosome or mitochondrion’.

28

Schedule 2, page 55, line 45, leave out ‘abnormality’ and insert ‘harmful genotype’.

29

Schedule 2, page 56, line 1, leave out ‘abnormality’ and insert ‘harmful gene, combination of genes, chromosomes or mitochondrion’.

30

Schedule 2, page 56, line 3, leave out ‘abnormality’ and insert ‘harmful genotype’.

32

Schedule 2, page 59, line 6, at end add—

‘Licences for therapy

3B

(1) A licence under this paragraph may authorise any of the following—

(a) bringing about the creation of embryos in vitro, and

(b) keeping or using embryos, for the purposes of therapy specified in the licence.

(2) Subject to the provisions of this Act, a licence under this paragraph may be granted subject to such conditions as may be specified in the licence.

(3) A licence under this paragraph may authorise the performance of any of the activities referred to in sub-paragraph (1) in such a manner as may be so specified.

(4) A licence under this paragraph may be granted for such period not exceeding three years as may be specified in the licence.

(5) This paragraph has effect subject to pargraph 3C. Purposes for which activities may be licensed under pargraph 3B

3C

(1) a licence under paragraph 3B cannot authorise any activity unless the activity appears to the Authority—

(a) to be necessary or desirable for any of the purposes of developing or deriving treatments for serious disease or other serious medical conditions, or

(b) to be necessary or desirable for such other purposes as may be specified in regulations.’.

3 June 2008

118

Clause 3, page 3, line 24, at end insert—

‘(5A)

Regulations may provide that—

(a) an egg can be a permitted egg, or

(b) a sperm can be a permitted sperm, even though the egg or sperm has been developed from one or more human cells in a prescribed process designed to treat infertility.

(5B)

Regulations under subsection (5A) may—

(a) provide that any sperm be developed from one or more cells of a genetic male and any egg be derived from one or more cells of a genetic female.

(b) specify, or otherwise restrict, the nature of the infertility which the prescribed process is intended to treat.’.

5^th June

9

Schedule 3, page 65, line 7, at end insert—

‘Cases where consent not required for storage and use for research

12A(1)

The human cells of a person (“the donor”) may be used to bring about the creation of an embryo or a human admixed embryo in vitro; and any embryo or human admixed embryo so created may be used or stored for the purposes of any project of research without the donor’s consent if the following conditions are met.

(2)

Condition A is that the human cells are lawfully taken from or provided by the donor.

(3)

Condition B is that the human cells were first stored or used prior to the day on which Schedule 3 to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 comes into force.

(4) Condition C is that the human cells, embryos or human admixed embryos are used in circumstances such that the person carrying out the research (“the researcher”) is not in possession, and not likely to come into possession, of information from which the donor can be identified.

(5)

Condition D is that it is not reasonably possible to contact the donor to obtain their consent.

(6)

Condition E is that there are resonable grounds for believing that research of comparable effectiveness cannot be carried out if the project of research for which the human cells, embryos or human admixed embryos are stored or used has to be confined to, or relate only to, material in relation to which there is an effective consent.

(7) Condition F is that it does not appear to the researcher that the donor has indicated any objection to such use or storage (as applicable).’.

10

Schedule 3, page 65, line 7, at end insert—

‘Consent in relation to children for storage and use for research

12A(1) The human cells of a person (“the child”) may be used to bring about the creation of an embryo or inter-species embryo in vitro, and any embryo or inter-species embryo so created, used or stored for the purposes of any project of research without the child’s consent if the following conditions are met.

(2) Condition A is that the human cells are lawfully taken from or provided by the child before the child attains the age of 18 years.

10^th June

150

Clause 25, page 27, line 27, at end insert—

‘(v) the disclosure is made in order to ensure the safety of medical treatment which the patient is to receive outside of licensed premises.’.

151

Clause 25, page 27, line 27, at end insert—

‘(v) the disclosure is made, on clinical grounds, as part of the patient’s medical care, to a practitioner who is bound by the ordinary duty of patient confidentiality.’.

173

Clause 29, page 33, line 20, at end insert—

‘(10B)

It is a defence for a person (“the defendant”) charged with an offence of doing anything which, under section 3(1) or (1A), 4(1)(a) or 4A(2), cannot be done other than in pursuance of a licence, to prove that at the material time the defendant believed on reasonable grounds that what they did was not something to which the Act applied.’.

119

Clause 30, page 34, line 12, at end insert ‘section 3ZA(5A)’.

174

Clause 30, page 34, line 14, at end insert ‘section 20A; section 20B;’.

171

Clause 35, page 36, line 19, after ‘then’, insert ‘unless W is a surrogate mother within the meaning of section 1(2) of the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 and’.

172

Clause 42, page 40, line 4, after ‘then’, insert ‘unless W is a surrogate mother within the meaning of section 1(2) of the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985’.

161

Clause 54, page 45, line 41, leave out ‘made by two people (“the applicants”)’.

162

Clause 54, page 45, line 42, after second ‘the’, insert ‘applicant or’.

163

Clause 54, page 46, line 1, after ‘not’, insert ‘the applicant or’.

164

Clause 54, page 46, line 4, after first ‘of’, insert ‘the applicant or’.

165

Clause 54, page 46, line 7, leave out subsection (2) and insert—

‘(2A)

An application for a parental order may by made by—

(a) a couple or

(b) one person who is not married or a civil partner.

(2B)

In this section, a couple means—

(a) a married couple or

(b) civil partners or

(c) two people (whether of different sexes or the same sex) who are living together in an enduring family relationship and who are not within the prohibited degrees of relationship to each other.

(2C)

A parental order may be made on the application of one person who is married or is a civil partner if the court is satisfied—

(a) that the person’s spouse or civil partner cannot be found,

(b) the spouses or civil partners have separated and are living apart and the separation is likely to be permanent, or

(c) the person’s spouse or partner is by reason of ill health, whether physical or mental, incapable of making an application for a parental order.’.

166

Clause 54, page 46, line 13, after first ‘the’, insert ‘applicant or’.

167

Clause 54, page 46, line 17, after second ‘the’, insert ‘applicant or’.

168

Clause 54, page 46, line 18, after ‘applicants’, insert ‘(or in the case of a single person, the applicant)’.

12^th June

169

Clause 54, page 46, line 20, after ‘applicants’, insert ‘(or in the case of a single person, the applicant)’.

170

Clause 54, page 47, line 10, after ‘by’, insert ‘a single person or by’.

12^th June

NC1

To move the following Clause:—

‘(1)

The Abortion Act 1967 (c.87) is amended as follows.

(2)

In section 1(1) omit from first “if” to end of paragraph (1) and insert—

“a registered medical practitioner is of the opinion, formed in good faith—

(a) that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the termination would be carried out in accordance with the conditions and principles of good medical practice, or

(b) that one or more of the following grounds applies—

(i) the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; or

(ii) the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated; or

(iii) there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.” ’.

NC2

To move the following Clause:—

‘(1) The Abortion Act 1967 (c.87) is amended as follows.

(2) In section 1(1) for first “medical” substitute “health care”.

1. In section 6, after “them:—” insert “ “registered health care practitioner” means a “registered medical practitioner” as defined in Schedule 1 to the Interpretation Act 1978 (c.30) or a nurse or midwife registered in the register maintained under article 5 of the Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001 by virtue of qualifications in nursing or midwifery, as the case may be.” ’.

4^th July

NC12

To move the following Clause:—

‘(1) The Abortion Act 1967 (c. 87) is amended as follows.

(2) After section 4(1) insert—

“(1A)

For the avoidance of doubt, subsection (1) shall not apply to the provision, prescription, dispensing or administration of emergency hormonal contraception or any other form of contraception by a registered health care practitioner or registered pharmacist except where otherwise specified in statute.

(3) In section 6, after “them:—, insert—

““registered pharmacist” means a registered pharmacist as defined under Schedule 1 of the Interpretation Act 1978 (c. 30).”’.

NC13

To move the following Clause:—

‘(1) The Abortion Act 1967 (c. 87) is amended as follows.

(2) In section 1(4) for “two registered medical practitioners,” substitute “a registered medical practitioner”.

(3) In section 2(1)(a) omit “practitioners or”’.

“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 and Wales 2006, table4a pp13 and Statistical Bulletin: Abortion Statistics, England and Wales 2007, table 4a pp13, respectively).

163 less 135 is 28. 28 over 135 is 0.21, and so it’s easy to see that the figure is 21%, not 23%, but that small difference is understandable if worked out on the back of an envelope, so I’m not going to make much of it.

Dorries goes on to say

“The figures today show that children are aborting babies, which is a stark indicator of how the government has presided over a continuous and steady increase in abortion rates in ever younger girls.”

Fortunately, statistics are available for 1991 to 2001 from the National Statistics website and from 2002 to 2007 from the Department of Health website. Statistics for abortions under fourteen years were not collected prior to 2002 (it would seem), but for under fifteen years were collected.

There isn’t data for rate, and so it’s hard to do any discrete probability distributions but you can do a quick standard deviation²; I’ve put data that vary by more than one standard deviation below the mean in italics and data that vary by more than one standard deviation above the mean in bold.

Using a single year’s change to describe a trend is largely meaningless. Looking over the available data, the increase over time may not be statistically significant³. The trend is neither continuous nor steady and possibly not there at all. In other words, Dorries is scaremongering.

xD.

1 – It’s not a blog if you can’t comment on it or trackback to it.

2 – For 14, mean is 151.33 and ? = 12.45 while for 15 mean is 1052.59 and ? = 66.76

3 – My memory of stats isn’t very good, but a Student’s t-test suggests it’s insignificant at a 5% confidence level

UPDATE 1335: The BBC agrees with my figure of 21%.
UPDATE 1617: Unity weighs in over at the Ministry of Truth.

As we know, the developments in neonatal care of recent years mean that some development that would normally take place in utero can now be allowed to take place outside in, say, an incubator. Advances have been made at the other end; in IVF, implantation can take place up to five days after in vitro fertilisation. For obvious reasons, there has not been the same focus on ex utero at the beginning of pregnancy as at the end, but it is not unreasonable to think that, one day, an entire pregnancy could take place outside of the womb. It might even be possible to effectively transplant a foetus, placenta and all, to an artificial womb. Although that may be a conjecture at the moment, it is a worthwhile thought experiment and, in any case, it is not unreasonable to think that our technologies will develop so that viability becomes a factor at shorter and shorter lengths of gestation.

What, then, would happen to people, like Nadine Dorries, who describe themselves as pro-choice?

In her closing remarks on the amendment she proposed, Ms Dorries quoted Professor Sunny Anand on improvements in science, saying that

“So much has happened in science in the last 20 years that, when you cast your vote, it will be like a snapshot in time. But science and research is like an ever-rolling movie.”

In broad terms, those supporting the further restriction favour viability as the criterion for the upper abortion time limit while those opposed favour sentience. If, however, the technology existed to transfer a pregnancy outside of the mother at any point – in other words, if the pregnancy was viable from conception – Ms Dorries’ arguments would lead to a ban on abortion. Indeed, as it becomes possible to have successful outcomes from earlier and earlier deliveries, Ms Dorries’ position tends to an outright ban.

It can be argued that if this wonderful machine, this artificial womb, were available, it would never be necessary to have an abortion. While it might not be necessary, it would not be desirable and the fact that it is not necessary does not mean that it is not permitted.

However, the point that a viable pregnancy, regardless of sentience, must not be interfered with remains. The question then becomes, again, ‘what is a viable pregnancy’. Let us say that there are two threats to the viability of a pregnancy, human-amendable (to include errors of omission) and not human-amendable. The latter we can do nothing about; if there is a car accident and the mother dies, despite efforts to save her, that is a tragedy that could not be resolved. Preventing the mother from having enough food to maintain the pregnancy – say, if she is imprisoned – is something that we can address. Note that these categories are not the same as human-made and not-human-made; diabetes we can effectively treat, something like a ruptured AAA we cannot. It is also the case that embryos can go from one stage to the other; IVF can be characterised as a human-amendable threat after fertilisation as a failure to maintain the proper conditions prior to implantation will result in the death of the blastocyst. Once implanted, some threats are human-amendable and some are not. It may reach a point, in the case of a premature delivery, where, in broad terms, the threats to the completion of development are human-amendable. If we cannot interfere to prevent a viable pregnancy, the use of something like the morning-after pill becomes tantamount to abortion as we introducing a human-amendable threat¹. Indeed, any interference with pregnancy becomes problematic. There is an argument that accepts this point in a slightly different form. In short, it says that ‘every sperm is sacred‘².

What I have tried to show is that is that using viability as a yard-stick for the upper limit for abortion is fraught with difficulties. Firstly, it means the date for abortion must be under near-constant review. Secondly, it tends towards an outright ban on abortion. Thirdly, it may imply not preventing a pregnancy from producing an offspring that is viable ex utero. Fourthly, it implies that emergency contraception is tantamount to abortion. Fifthly, it goes towards (but does not necessarily reach) equating any contraception with abortion.

The debate is portrayed as a conflict between two rights; the rights of the mother over her own body and the right of the offspring to life on the other, with the latter trumping the former at the point when the offspring is viable ex utero. I would contend that rights do not come with viability and that sentience is a better point for the acquisition of rights.

xD.

1 – similar arguments apply for embryonic stem cell research, I think.
2 – I have deliberately avoided dealing with religious objections to abortion for three reasons; firstly, they are generally founded on beliefs with wide-ranging implications for the believer’s world-view; secondly, it is generally more effective to deal with particular issues than attacking the entire world-view; thirdly, most of the debates around this did not directly reference religion. In this case, however, the effect is the same regardless of whether the basis for the argument is religious or not.

I think that Dawn Primarolo has won some friends this evening with this intervention on single mothers and same-sex couples (as reported on guardian.co.uk)

“There is no evidence that these women do not make good parents or that somehow they make bad parents and should be prepared to take additional steps”

And in an intervention to Ms Dorries that may become a leitmotif for some of the Liberal Conspirators, not least Sunny and Unity, and Tim ‘Bloggerheads’ Ireland:

“She has asserted many things as fact which are not this evening.”

This is not, however, a time for celebration; after issues that raise such passions are debated, it is not appropriate. Tempers have been frayed and emotions aroused on all sides. It is worth remembering, however, that Parliament has prevented the creation of a new generation of Vera Drakes.

I suspect that people will be going through Hansard with a jeweller’s loupe to reply to some of the arguments that were deployed in support of the restrictions. I do not believe that certain sections of that lobby will do anything other than redouble their efforts.

While this has been going on here, California has lifted its ban on same-sex marriage. Amongst the first to be married will be Ellen DeGeneres & Portia de Rossi while George Takei, better known as Mr Sulu from Star Trek, will marry his partner of 21 years, Brad Altman.

xD.