Why aren't we talking about abortion?
The SNP leadership row is a reminder of how little abortion is on the agenda
I’m back! Thankfully I am feeling slightly less burnt out this week than last, which is good. Managed to get through the whole week without crying at my desk. Is this progress? Personal growth? A lesson learnt? One can only hope…
Anyway, enough about me. This week I want to reflect on the SNP leadership race and the row over whether strict religious beliefs can coexist with politics.
The resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister certainly took me by surprise. Her departure has led to three frontrunners in the race to replace her: Kate Forbes, Humza Yousaf, and Ash Regan. But it’s Forbes that has been making the headlines, after she told Channel 4 News that her religious beliefs meant she would not have voted in favour of equal marriage, had she had a vote at the time.
Forbes is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, which holds anti-LGBTQ+ views. Her remarks have opened up a row about the conflict between religious beliefs and political office: can one lead a progressive, pro-LGBTQ+ nation and party, if one holds beliefs that are antithetical to that agenda?
As someone raised in a gay household, who has advocated for LGBTQ+ rights since I was eight-years-old, I vehemently disagree with Forbes’ views. The idea that LGBTQ+ people are entitled to fewer rights than their straight peers is the wrong view. I question whether a politician should be in a leadership position, if their beliefs mean they cannot advocate for equal treatment and rights to all citizens.
But what I have found curious is how the debate has focused on Forbes’ views on equal marriage rights, and not on abortion.
The Free Church of Scotland is anti-abortion: its members have compared abortion to slavery (a classic tactic of extremist anti-abortion groups, which compare themselves to Wilberforce and Clarkson). Revd David Robertson said in 2015, when abortion law was devolved, that abortion was an “evil” and accused the pro-abortion movement of not wanting an enlightened conversation.
These are fairly extreme views – ones which are, as I say, associated with some of the more extremist anti-abortion groups.
And yet, the focus has been on equal marriage and not abortion.
This, in my view, is a problem. Not because we should not be talking about LGBTQ+ rights in the leadership race. We absolutely should.
But because we should be also talking about the risk to stagnating or rolled back abortion rights in Scotland.
Let me explain.
Whatever Forbes’ personal beliefs on equal marriage, there is little she can do to change the law. Equal marriage is not contested in Scotland, even if some members of her church would like it to be. Although no rights are ever fixed, there is certainly no appetite to reverse equal marriage in Scotland and the possibility of it happening in the next few years are miniscule. Of course, one can never afford to rest on our laurels – the US is a lesson in what happens when we take rights for granted. But on balance, Forbes’ personal views on equal marriage are unlikely to have an impact on the law as it stands.
Abortion is different. Because when it comes to Scotland, there is a lot of work to be done to improve access to abortion.
Let’s take buffer zones as a starting point. While a law introducing buffer zones around abortion clinics is likely to be passed (before resigning, Sturgeon had confirmed the Scottish Government would back the legislation introduced by Green MSP Gillian Mackay, meaning it should pass through Holyrood), Scotland has lagged behind Westminster. Protesters are still there, outside clinics, harassing women trying to access safe and legal healthcare.
Last year, the Scottish Government decided to spend £10,000 on promoting “dialogue” between abortion protesters and patients, a move that was surreal and ill-judged, and failed to recognise the extremist views held by some anti-abortion protesters. Such a scheme offered a false balance: while anyone is free to hold whatever ugly views they choose, those views should not impinge on a woman’s right to healthcare.
Then there is the issue of abortion access. Figures from last year found that women are struggling to access abortion care in Scotland, and are having to travel to England to get the support they need. According to a report in The Scotsman, since 2019, 170 women and girls have had to cross the border to England in order to access an abortion. Most women needing abortions will have a medical termination in the first trimester. But those needing abortion care later on in pregnancy have to travel south of the border as there is no health board in Scotland that provides abortion care up to the longstanding legal limit of 24 weeks.
Scotland has become a target for international anti-abortion groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom, while this Lent the 40 Days For Life campaign is protesting in Glasgow. The man who was once known as Europe’s most influential anti-abortion, far-right campaigner cut his teeth in the Scottish movement. So there is active and urgent work to be done in Scotland to improve abortion rights.
One of the questions I get asked most often is do I think that the UK will see a similar rollback on abortion rights as we saw in the US. And my answer is, never say never but the real issue we face is that access is failing to improve. Rather than a rollback of rights, the UK struggles to get progress on abortion rights.
This has changed in the past couple of years: decriminalisation in Northern Ireland, telemedicine (Scotland led the way on that) across Britain, and buffer zones legislation in England and Wales.
But we are still fighting in Britain for the biggest progress of all: decriminalisation.
What worries me when anti-abortion politicians gain power across Britain is not necessarily a rolling back of rights, but a stagnation. That progress gets stalled, that abortion gets de-prioritised, that progress for women is put on the back-burner.
There’s a second point to be made here too: why the hell aren’t we talking about abortion in this race? Why has the row over Forbes’ beliefs barely mentioned abortion?
The answer is stigma and fear, in my view. There is still so much discomfort when it comes to talking about abortion. There’s still a stigma, I think, to come out wholeheartedly defending abortion care, and normalising abortion as part of healthcare, and condemning those who refuse to recognise women’s rights to abortion care. This has helped to create that stagnation. We are (thankfully) more comfortable criticising those who are anti equal marriage, and defending marriage rights, than we are calling out those who would deny women our right to bodily integrity.
This has sometimes been because abortion is seen as a moral view – and disagreeing with someone who holds anti-abortion views is therefore too personal. But this excuse does not stand. Abortion is not a moral question, it is a question of healthcare, and politicians with the power to legislate on healthcare should be held to account if they wish to deny women access to healthcare.
Stigma is one of the reasons I dropped the term “pro choice” from my vocabulary and switched to saying “pro abortion”. We have to fight this stigma and we have to call out those who are anti-abortion.
Obligatory book plug
If you want to know more about my views on abortion and in particular the extremist forces that helped to mainstream anti-abortion views in the world’s parliaments, then you are in luck. I have written a whole book about it, including insights from my time undercover in some of those extremist spaces.
It’s called Bodies Under Siege and you can pre-order it from Verso.
Next week I’ll start posting events links… the launch is coming soon!
What I loved
Vicky Spratt is one of my favourite journalists and her investigation this week for the i into office blocks being converted into temporary accommodation is one of the reasons why. Vicky is a superb reporter who writes with so much empathy, and who gets to the heart of the housing crisis.
And if I may be allowed two recommendations, I want to link you to Lauren Crosby-Medlicott’s piece for openDemocracy about the mental health crisis in women’s prisons. It is so hard to get stories about women in prison placed, for the horrible reason that these women are so marginalised, articles about their treatment rarely get ‘traction’. But it is an issue that should be at the top of the agenda and I am so glad she is writing about it. Because Lauren is AWESOME!
What I’m writing
Perhaps one of the reasons I am feeling less burnt out this week is because I only filed three stories – one of which you will have to wait until Monday to read. Both are for Byline Times.
Kipling Out, Hemingway In? The Dahl Edits Fail on Diversity
‘They Are Not Strangers Anymore’ The Refugees who have made the UK Home
What I’m reading
Having raced through Say Nothing, I am now reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis. All I can say is: WTAF.
I’m still reading Prep by Curtis Sittenfield and my night time book is The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie.
I’ve been sent so many books to read, including Rachel Hewitt’s In Her Nature; David Broder’s Mussolini’s Grandchildren; Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer; Naked Feminism by Victoria Bateman – and I still have to carve out time to read August Blue by Deborah Levy. My event with Sherine Tadros is being recorded soon to talk about her book Taking Sides, and on 14 March I’ll be interviewing Sophie Mackintosh about Cursed Bread.
You can watch me talk about Salman Rushdie’s Victory City with Darran Anderson, Susie Alegre and Andrew Kelly for Bristol Ideas here.
What I’m watching
Nothing. Just Modern Family. No serious telly-watching or movie-watching to report.
That’s all for this week! Next week my newsletter will be leading on HASH TAG PERSONAL NEWS and, hopefully, a VERY SPECIAL FIRST which might mean it coming to you on Sunday, not Saturday.
What better time to tell your friends to subscribe…
Ciao and au revoir mes amis!