The abortion law in England, Scotland and Wales is far from perfect. The unnecessary two-rule, the restrictions that prevent women who choose to do so completing medical abortions at home, the prevention of nurses and midwives providing the service. But those problems are slight compared to the situation for women in Northern Ireland, where women have almost no access to abortion at all.

As a result of past and present cowardice, grubby dealmaking and other political skulduggery, the 1967 Abortion Act that applies in England, Scotland and Wales does not apply in Northern Ireland. The basic rules date back to 1927 – but there are no clear guidelines. So only 70 to 80 abortions are carried out each year in Northern Ireland, under extremely restrictive conditions.

Otherwise, by the official count, more than 1,300 women last year, and 50,000 women over the past 40 years, have had to travel to England, Wales or Scotland, or even further afield, and to pay for their abortion, since if they give a Northern Ireland address they cannot have an NHS abortion.
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Green Party policy on abortion was already pretty solid, saying that the party would not back any change in the law to reduce women’s access to abortion.

But I am pleased to say that after the Spring Conference in Reading, which concluded yesterday, it is now rather better, backing three changes to recognise medical developments: to remove the requirement to obtain two doctors’ signatures, to allow nurses and midwives to perform abortions, and to loosen restrictions on where abortions can be performed.

These are all measures backed (in slightly varying patterns) by the Royal College of Nurses, the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Ob/Gyn, and match the finding of the Joint parliamentary committee on science and technology – which found that they would reduce waits for abortions that would anyway being carried out.

You would think that all sides of the debate would agree that earlier abortions are preferable to later ones, but I’m not seeing any sign of such sense from those who are trying to use the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to reduce women’s access to abortion.
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There’s an old myth about the nature of human behaviour – the myth of the “rational consumer” – this is a man (and yes it always seems to be a man) who always acts in ways in his own self-interest, driving the “perfect” invisible hand of a market economy. It is a myth that even in economics has disappeared from the all but the wildest fringes of the capitalist apologists, but Drew Westen, in his powerful new The Political Brain shows that it clings on in some areas, including the world of the Democratic Party of the USA.

And, I suspect, further afield. There’s something about left politics that makes it particularly prone to believing that if you just present people with the facts, with a solid rational argument, then of course they’ll see sense. It tends to produce leaflets dense in text and detail, arguments involving complex mathematical formulae, and headline high on accuracy and low on sexiness.
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