Women’s Rights to Reproductive Healthcare: United States

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Milling]

The FCDO’s remit in this regard is international, and we have a very proud record in terms of universal and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we pay a lot of attention to this and raise it in international forums.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Rape victims, women facing a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy and children who are victims of sexual abuse are all among the women who will now be forced to carry a child to full term. This Government are never slow to condemn religious fundamentalism when it is among those countries that we consider to be hostile to us. Would it not be all the more powerful if the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and indeed the Minister at the Dispatch Box were to condemn in far stronger language to one of our allies the rise in religious fundamentalism and the impact it will have on people many, many miles away who desperately want to know that they have someone on their side?

[Amanda Milling]

I have been pretty clear on my own personal opinion on this court judgment, but it is a court judgment in the US, which is not within our jurisdiction. The Prime Minister was very clear at the weekend on his view in seeing it as a backward step. One of the interviews that he gave was on CNN, so I think he has been pretty clear on our views.