Offences Against the Person Act 1861

Jo Stevens Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

If I may, I will happily come on to the question about rights and to the moral debate on abortion. I recognise that there are different opinions within the House and indeed within Northern Ireland on this issue, which is why this is not a partisan issue. If I may, I will finish my point and then come on to exactly that.

The Government are currently consulting on the domestic abuse legislation. Indeed, I previously met the former Home Secretary to discuss this and the opportunity that Bill presents for us to make progress. I understand Ministers’ concern to stop abortion being used to control women, so their interest in OAPA in relation to this legislation was perhaps different from mine. I would also highlight to Ministers that the Serious Crimes Act 2015 criminalises controlling or coercive behaviour in family or intimate relationships. I would argue that the men prosecuted under OAPA for intentionally causing the loss of a wanted pregnancy could well have been prosecuted under the existing assault law.

Furthermore, organisations like Women’s Aid and End Violence Against Women both support decriminalisation, because they recognise that current criminalisation puts vulnerable women at risk. A study has shown that one in five women who bought pills online did so because they were in a violent or controlling relationship. We do not protect women by criminalising them. That is why so many medical bodies are also calling for decriminalisation; the royal colleges and the British Medical Association are just some of them. Indeed, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has argued that the legal situation in Northern Ireland means its healthcare professionals “struggle to provide” the support they would like to give women who need an abortion or to manage any post-abortion complications safely. We also know that this is the view of the Northern Irish public. The majority—whether individuals from any particular political background, religious background, age or ethnicity—would like abortion to be managed as a medical rather than a criminal issue.

I have respect for people who hold a different view on abortion itself and the role that it plays in equality, but I see abortion as an equalities issue, because men and women will never truly be free while one cannot control what happens to their own body. Indeed, as the residents of Gilead have shown us, that is fundamental to human rights. I therefore make no apology for putting the safety and dignity of women first, as part of equality between the sexes.

I know I will get abuse online for saying so because, frankly, women get the blame whatever we do in such situations. Indeed, judging by the emails I have had today, it is either my or my mother’s fault. I made the mistake that many MPs make of actually reading my emails today:

“Your views are a disgrace to humanity and the betrayal of the truly innocent. Woman can always say no or keep their clothes on!!”

“You madame were once an Embryo, You madame were once a fetus in your mother’s womb; You were once a PRE-BORN baby.”

“I wonder what decision you would have wanted your mother to make about your life or death had she been given the opportunity in the months before you were born?”

I respect those who disagree with abortion on all grounds as a matter of faith, and I make this simple point to those who think only of the extremes: if they support access to abortion only in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality, in essence their concern is more about the manner in which a woman became pregnant than about abortion. Why does it matter if we trust women and give them the chance to control their own bodies rather than being forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy? Because it is about freedom. So shout at me all you want—this is not Gilead, and we should not be frightened to speak up for the equal rights of women. Not to do so is to put women’s lives and liberation at risk.

The truth is that, in 2018, we still do not trust our own women. This is the one healthcare decision that no UK woman can make on her own. That is why the UN has called on us to repeal these specific sections of law; no Assembly, nor indeed this place, can make any progressive law for itself on this subject without doing so. In supporting this proposal, every Member can send a message that, in 2018, all the women of the UK deserve to be treated as equal citizens.

[Jo Stevens]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I am just about to finish, so I will not.

One hundred and fifty years is a long time to wait for social justice, so let us not wait anymore. Today we ask the Minister to commit to a timetable for when the will of the House can be tested on this issue, so that rather than waiting 150 years, we wait at most 150 days before we see change—so that we truly get, in the 21st century, 21st century laws. The “d” today is for the debate, but we must have time for the other “d”: decision making, to bring dignity to all our constituents. I ask the Ministers: give us a date.

--- Later in debate ---

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) on bringing this debate to the House today. She has made an eloquent and compelling case for the decriminalisation of abortion across the whole United Kingdom, but she should not have had to make that case, because it had already been made brilliantly by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) last year. We should have enacted this change already. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow also made an excellent case about the compatibility of her proposals with the devolution laws. That is an important point to make.

I speak as a former shadow Secretary of State for Wales and for Northern Ireland—I occupied those positions for fully half the time I have been in this place—and I believe that choice and compassion for women should trump all the constitutional concerns. That is what we should be deciding as a legislature, either here in this House or in Northern Ireland. I am a devolutionist, and I believe that we should respect the devolution settlement in all parts of the UK, but I am also someone who believes fundamentally in the universality of human rights, including the rights of women in all parts of the UK—indeed, in all parts of the world—to choose what happens to their bodies and to have legal and healthcare systems that respect their choices and look after their health and wellbeing.

The abortion laws in Northern Ireland—however they have been derived, however long-standing the conventions might be, and whatever the views of the politicians in Northern Ireland might be—do not respect or protect the human rights or the health and wellbeing of the women of Northern Ireland. That is why they should be changed. Ideally, that should happen in Stormont, but if Stormont is unable to rise to that challenge, it should be done in this place.

[Jo Stevens]

Every man in this Chamber has control and choice over their reproductive healthcare. Every man in this Chamber can have a vasectomy if they wish to do so, without the threat of prosecution. As a woman, I have no control or choice. Does my hon. Friend agree that, for all the complexities of the Northern Ireland political situation, this is a matter of equality and human rights?

[Owen Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. Devolution necessarily means that there will be differences between the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom, but it should not mean that people in any one part of the UK should have a diminished set of rights. That is what we are dealing with in Northern Ireland.

I became utterly convinced of this case when I led a delegation of Labour MPs to Northern Ireland earlier this year to hear directly from the women of Northern Ireland about their experiences. One of the women who spoke to us has been mentioned several times in today’s debate. Sarah Ewart has become a great champion for the cause of reform in Northern Ireland, and her story is typical. At 19 weeks, she was diagnosed as having a foetus with anencephaly, a fatal neural tube defect. The baby was never going to live. She was unaware of the circumstances and went to her GP to ask for an abortion, only to be told that she could not have one. She ended up spending over £2,500 to come to England and undergo a not terribly satisfactory procedure, and being traumatised in the process. She is one of hundreds of women undertaking that journey, and one of thousands who have contemplated seeking, or have sought, medication on the internet to bring about an early termination. That cannot be right in 2018 in any part of the United Kingdom. It cannot be right that we endure circumstances in which the Victorian practice of backstreet abortions is growing in part of the United Kingdom. That should simply be unacceptable.

I want briefly to talk about the politics of this. Hon. Members from Northern Ireland have spoken with knowledge of their communities, but I do not think that we have heard a completely full account of where public opinion lies in Northern Ireland, or of the political situation there. One of the parties in Northern Ireland has changed its view recently—Sinn Féin has moved its position—and other political parties, notably the Ulster Unionist party, have previously stated that this would be a matter of conscience, were there to be a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly. So it is not black and white that there is political opposition to this across the board in Northern Ireland. Nor is it right to say that there is public opposition, because some of the most recent polls have shown that up to 75% of people in Northern Ireland, of all faiths and none, believe that there should be decriminalisation there.