Bans achieve nothing
Perhaps this is awkward to say, but I have been thinking about the parallels between abortion bans and the UK's migration policy
I say awkward, because I never like to compare two separate issues that are entirely unrelated to make a different point. But I was watching the news this week which has been – bar Tory psychodrama – overwhelmingly focused on two issues: abortion and migration. And I couldn’t help but see the parallels.
Let me explain…
The horrific deaths on the Greek coast after a ship carrying migrant people sank, and the continuing battles over small boat crossings in the British Channel, are the direct results of policies that close down safe and legal routes to asylum. People desperate to find safety and hope are forced to make dangerous and deadly journeys because there are such limited safe and legal ways to reach European shores.
In the UK context, which is the one I am most familiar, there are very few safe and legal routes to asylum. There are the specific visa schemes, such as Homes for Ukraine and the BNO visa for people from Hong Kong. There is the Afghan Citizen Resettlement Scheme, but the failures of that scheme mean we are seeing more and more Afghans fleeing the Taliban arriving via irregular routes. And then there are ways you can claim asylum if you are able to enter the UK on a tourist or student visa, for example. But in the main, you have to be in the UK to claim asylum, and if you can’t get a visa or a passport because you are fleeing persecution or a war or there’s no British consul in your country etc. etc. then you have no safe, legal way to our shores.
This meant you used to get in a lorry. But that irregular route has been mainly closed down. So now you get in a boat.
This was highlighted in a now infamous select committee hearing where Tim Loughton (Cons MP) asked the Home Secretary Suella Braverman how a teenage boy in an unnamed African country facing persecution and fearing for his life would be able to claim asylum in the UK unless he arrived in an irregular manner. The answer was that he could not do so (not that Suella admitted that). To put this in a real life context, this is now the situation facing those fleeing war in Sudan. There is no safe and legal route for most Sudanese people to arrive into the UK right now.
So they will get on a boat.
The closing down of safe and legal routes does not prevent people trying to claim asylum, it simply means they employ increasingly dangerous means to do so. Making it harder to reach the UK does not stop people from trying. It just means they will try riskier and riskier and riskier methods, which results in people dying.
The solution to the small boats crisis, as all migrant rights charities keep explaining, is to open up safe and legal routes.
There is a parallel here with abortion bans. Banning abortion does not prevent women and girls from trying to end an unwanted pregnancy. It means they will be forced to find unsafe methods to do so. In my reporting on this issue, I spoke to activists who describe women drinking disinfectant and inserting objects into their vagina to end pregnancy. Doing so risks their health in the immediate moment (drinking disinfectant won’t stop Covid, it may terminate a pregnancy, and it will poison you) but also can impact fertility later on. If you insert an object into your vagina and tear, that can cause infection, even death.
What struck me is how methods of unsafe abortion remain the same as the ones we saw decades ago. Despite medical advances in reproductive healthcare, women in desperate situations will resort to the age-old practises: poison, objects, violence.
This is why 50,000 women die due to unsafe abortion every year. But women are willing to take that risk because the risk in that moment outweighs the risks of an unwanted pregnancy. Just as a desperate person fleeing for safety will take the risk the boat won’t sink, because the risk outweighs staying behind.
Abortion bans don’t end abortion, they end safe abortion. And the harder it becomes to get an abortion, the more risks women will take to end an unwanted pregnancy. And the more women will die.
Obligatory book plug
Well it’s been published! The launches last week were just so wonderful and I am sharing some pics from the Bristol launch and from my event with Professor Madhu Krishnan, Paul Mason and Nick Lowles this week.
You can listen to the audio recording of the Bristol launch. It was such a wonderful evening, I felt so confident and happy, and to be surrounded by friends and strangers who care about this issue was an amazing experience. Thank you Bristol Ideas for making it happen.
You can also watch me on Politics Joe talking to Ava Santina, just before the London launch. And listen to me on BBC Woman’s Hour – a lifelong ambition unlocked.
What I’m loving
This week I want to profile this urgent investigation by the team at Centre for Countering Digital Hate on how Google is making money by advertising fake abortion clinics.
What I’m writing
You have a few weeks where it feels like it’s all copywriting, then four articles come out at once!
ABORTION IS STILL ILLEGAL IN ENGLAND. WE MUST STOP CRIMINALISING VULNERABLE WOMEN (Lead UK)
The struggle to recruit procurement professionals (Inside Housing)
ANTI-CHOICE ACTIVISTS CAPITALISE ON ABORTION JAIL TRAGEDY (Lead UK)
‘She Had Dreams’: Thousands join abortion protests in Poland (the I paper)
I’ve got a feature out next week but then writing will be a bit quiet for a month or so as I am going on a major reporting trip, details of which remain rather secret squirrel. But on the other side of the trip, there should be LOTS of activity.
What I’m reading
I re-read In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lola Akinmade Åkerström and The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L Strayer. Started Agent Zig-Zag by Ben MacIntyre on the recommendation of a friend and it is highly entertaining. I thought A Place of Execution by Val McDermid was superb, and one of my faves by her. Still on a thriller tip, I really enjoyed The Darker The Night by Martin Patience, while its theme blurred into real life when I was reading last weekend!!
But top top read was Having and Being Had by Eula Biss which was so so smart and thoughtful and worth everyone’s time.
I really need some good novel recommendations to get me out of my current thriller comfort zone – smart, literary fiction, no ‘hot mess in London’ stories, but curious novels that do exciting things with plot and form.
What I’m watching
I’ve nearly finished Season 4 of Babylon Berlin and what am I going to do without it!
Also because my finger is always on the pulse, because I embody the zeitgeist, and am forever on the edge of the curve, I just subscribed to Now TV to watch a little-known series called Succession, I doubt you’ve heard of it, barely anyone is talking about it. More as we get it…
Films-wise I watched Whisky Tango Foxtrot which I thought didn’t really have any urgency in the plot, but was interesting enough. And A Private War because I felt like scaring myself shitless about my upcoming secret squirrel reporting trip.
That’s all from me. Thank you to everyone who has made my book week and a bit so special and fulfilling, particularly my friends, my agent Kate Johnson, my publicist Catherine Smiles, Madhu, Paul and Nick, and Zoe and Andrew at Bristol Ideas. It is the weirdest experience launching a book, and they have all conspired to make me have some of the best nights of my life. Thank you!
Please read, share, subscribe… and buy my book! Look, it has one Five Star review on Good Reads already.
Ciao ciao!
P.S I wrote this SubStack listening to Beethoven’s 7th and it’s SO GOOD.