Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendment in my name and give notice that I intend to test the opinion of the House.

I am a severely disabled parliamentarian who believes that I have as much right to exist as anyone else. The regulations may not apply to me directly, but they still threaten me because they challenge that right by devaluing my existence. The narrative of the regulations is that I should not really exist. Indeed, I would be better off dead. The Minister cites CEDAW, but I wonder how that narrative does not perpetuate a negative stereotype against disabled people, which CEDAW expressly prohibits. If we pass the regulations today, not only are we endorsing lethal disability discrimination right up to birth but we are in practice saying to anyone who is born with a disability that they somehow escaped the net.

To his credit, the Prime Minister has committed to publishing in the near future the most ambitious and transformative disability plan in a generation, so it is somewhat odd that Her Majesty’s Government should none the less think it appropriate to publish regulations whose ambition is not to transform the lives of human beings with disabilities but, rather, to ensure that they never see the light of day.

I have to say that there seems to be a slight disconnect in the Government’s messaging. Perhaps the Minister could explain to the House, to me and to Harry Cahoon from Belfast, whose mother, Grace, emailed me yesterday, how it makes sense for the Government to tell human beings born disabled, “We want to support you but only if we haven’t found and killed you first.” My bones break easily. Harry, who is a happy 17 month-old baby, has an extra chromosome. Brittle bones and Down’s syndrome respectively are our medical conditions. We both, therefore, meet the criteria in the regulations that we have a physical or mental impairment that deems us to be severely or seriously disabled, so under these regulations we would qualify for death right up to birth.

That is ultimately what the regulations are about: death for disability—in other words, state-sanctioned, state-sponsored lethal disability discrimination. It is tragic that, despite the immense sacrifices of my grandparents’ generation, who fought and died in the war, the eugenicist poison that informed Adolf Hitler’s Aktion T4 euthanasia programme against disabled human beings is now informing government policy and being imposed on the people of Northern Ireland.

We have a choice: do we effectively endorse lethal disability discrimination, or do we instead send a resounding message of affirmation to human beings born disabled, and to their families, that your Lordships’ House upholds their dignity and equality? I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Shinkwin]

Leave out all the words after “that” and insert “this House declines to approve the Regulations laid before the House on 23 March because they give the Secretary of State the power actively to commission discrimination in Northern Ireland by denying unborn human beings with disabilities the same protections afforded non-disabled human beings between 24 weeks gestation and full term; and because such commissioning would implicate the Secretary of State, and by extension Her Majesty’s Government, in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes towards people with disabilities, as it would provide that while unborn non-disabled human beings from 24 weeks’ gestation are worthy of protection from termination, those who might be born with disabilities are not.”

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I will keep my remarks very brief. I thank noble Lords who spoke in support of genuine equality. I am sure that that will be appreciated by disabled people and their families, whose voices are so often drowned out on this issue. They know, as I do, that the idea that these regulations are not discriminatory is absurd. I beg to test the opinion of the House.