Reproductive Rights

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered access to reproductive rights around the world.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, in a debate that should concern everybody in the country who is committed to equality. Abortion lies at the heart of equality for women, and men and women can never truly be equal until they have equal control over their own bodies. Abortion is the most common procedure that women of reproductive age undergo, and one in three women in Britain under the age of 45 have an abortion in their lifetime. In truth, those of us committed to equality and to ensuring that women are able to make choices about their own bodies can never be too vigilant, or think that the law in this country, let alone around the world, brings us equality and human rights. That is because there are continued attacks on that basic freedom for women, and that is what the debate is about.

I have seen and read the Minister’s words, and he knows that I am a fan of his persuasive abilities. However, I want to test whether the Government will learn the lesson of the suffragette movement, which is that it is deeds not words that matter, especially when it comes to equality. The Government must not simply say that they are committed to ensuring that women have the right to decide their own sexual and reproductive health; it matters that they act, including in response to any threats to that right.

There is a big variation around the world in access to abortion. Although 98% of countries permit abortion to save the life of a woman, only 62% allow it to preserve a woman’s mental health, and 63% to preserve a woman’s physical health. Only 27% of countries provide abortion on request. There has been some progress. For example, in recent years there has been a heated national debate in Bolivia when it was discovered that women were being turned in by their healthcare providers. A 16-year-old girl who arrived at hospital haemorrhaging was later apprehended and accused by hospital staff of having had an abortion. New legislation in Bolivia now allows abortion in the first eight weeks of pregnancy for a broad range of circumstances.

Canada decriminalised abortion in 1988. As a result, not only is Canada’s abortion rate lower than in the United Kingdom, but it enjoys the world’s lowest rate of maternal mortality from abortion. Abortion is legal in many parts of South Asia, including India, Nepal and Bangladesh, although it is not always accessible. In some African countries, for example, South Africa and Ethiopia, abortion is permissible and reasonably accessible.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that sensitivity to African culture must be foremost when dealing in and with African nations, and that we must always take into account their belief systems regarding sexual health and reproduction?

[Stella Creasy]

First and foremost, we should listen to African women, and they are consistently clear that they would like control over their own bodies. Being forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy is no freedom or liberation at all.

For every country where there is progress, we also see the tightening grip of the anti-choice movement. Let us not call it “pro-life”; there is nothing pro-life about forcing a woman to continue an unwanted pregnancy. In Europe—our own continent—Poland now has some of the strictest rules on abortion in the world, and abortion is allowed only if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, if the woman’s life is in danger, or in cases of severe or fatal foetal abnormality. Consequently, 80,000 Polish women a year go abroad or seek illegal abortions at home.

America now has a President who says that women should be “punished” if they have an abortion, and a Vice-President who believes that women who have a miscarriage should report it and hold a funeral. One Governor signed a law that states that it is illegal to have an abortion once a foetal heartbeat has been detected. Given that heartbeats can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy—sometimes before a women even realises she is pregnant—that is no freedom or liberation at all.

In El Salvador, abortion is illegal with no exceptions, and that horrendous ban violates the basic human rights of women in that country. At least 23 women and girls remain in prison as a result of the abortion ban, and one woman, Teodora del Carmen Vasquez, walked out of prison a few weeks ago after more than a decade of imprisonment. She was marked as a criminal because she began bleeding and suffered a stillbirth. She was sentenced to 30 years for aggravated homicide, and released only after the Supreme Court ruled that there was not enough evidence to show that she had killed her baby. Abortion may be permitted in Rwanda, but Rwandan police unjustly arrest and imprison hundreds of women on abortion-related charges—such women make up 25% of the female prison population.

The number of maternal deaths resulting from illegal abortions represents the truth: banning abortion does not stop abortion; it simply makes it unsafe. In Africa, a quarter of all those who have an unsafe abortion are adolescent girls. Indeed, about half of the 20,000 Nigerian women who die from unsafe abortions each year are adolescents. It is insulting to suggest that African women do not deserve the rights that we would fight for in our country and around the world. Africa shows us how vital international aid is, as is the job that the Minister is intended to do. Abortion is relatively legal in Zambia, but only 16% of women have access to abortion facilities—in Zambia’s Central Province, there is just one medical doctor for more than 110,000 patients.

Closer to home we see the impact of restrictions on access to healthcare services for women. In the Republic of Ireland, the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act 2013 imposed an almost total criminalisation of abortion. Ireland is one of a few countries in Europe with such highly restrictive abortion laws. The Irish constitution currently affords equal rights to the life of a foetus and to the life of a woman. However, the 18,000 women from Ireland who have travelled to the UK since 2012 reflect the fact that stopping access to abortion does not stop abortion, it just puts people at risk, including—increasingly—at risk from taking pills they have bought online. At the end of this week the Irish will go to the polls. I plead for dignity, for compassion in a crisis, and to ensure that every Irish person can care for their own at home, that there will be a yes vote.

But who are we to lecture? We should not forget how we treat women in our own backyard, particularly in Northern Ireland, which has some of the harshest laws and punishments in Europe for women who undergo an abortion. A woman with an unwanted pregnancy in Northern Ireland must either travel to the mainland or procure abortion pills online. Since the Government agreed to fund those abortions on the NHS, more than 700 women have travelled to England or Scotland from Northern Ireland. However, those are the women who are able to travel and get away from family commitments, who are not in a coercive relationship, and who have their travel documents. Little wonder that the United Nations condemned the United Kingdom for its treatment of Northern Irish women, which it called cruel, degrading and inhuman.

The Minister might say that each of those examples is due to separate policy decisions in those countries, but I want to sound the alarm and call attention to the fact that that might not be the case. Increasingly, around the world, far-right organisations and extreme religious groups are co-ordinating and funding anti-abortion and anti-choice campaigns. We in this House are used to debating the impact of foreign countries interfering in our democracy—perhaps in referendums—and we should be alive to the fact that those foreign organisations and countries are interfering in a woman’s basic right to choose. The real “The Handmaid’s Tale” is now unfolding.

In 2013, American and European campaigners met in this capital city to plan their campaign. It is called Restoring the Natural Order: an Agenda for Europe, and it seeks to overturn basic laws on human rights related to sexuality and reproduction. Since that meeting, we have seen the impact of those organisations, and the funding they have provided. We have seen how they produced results in Poland with the ban on abortion, and with bans on equal marriage in several central European countries and action on LGBT rights. We have seen how they have targeted international aid in the UK, Europe and America.

In 2013-14 the European Citizens Initiative, One of Us, called on the European Commission to propose legislation that would ensure that EU funds could not be used to fund abortion. It garnered 1.7 million signatures, and although the EU rejected that petition, given the impact it would have on women’s healthcare, that was by no means a one-off. Such rhetoric is coming back.