I’ve used it to post a collection of pictures of and quotes from some of the Northern Ireland women who are campaigning to have abortion rights extended to Northern Ireland when parliament votes on Abortion Act amendments at the report stage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. The women speak for themselves, which is surely at least as good as me ranting.

You’ll see that they are concerned that the great Gordon Brown has already done for their chances of a Yes vote by agreeing to an anti abortion deal with the Demoractic Unionists in exchange for the DUP’s support on 42 days’ detention.

They also talk about the role they expect Westminster to play in Northern Ireland, and about their disappointment in Stormont.

The gallery sits on my hangbitch site at the moment, and with a variety of logos, because we didn’t manage to integrate the gallery at LC before Sunny left. We’ll sort that out when he gets back.

I’ve also added audios of all the speakers at last week’s pro choice lobby at parliament.

Link to Northern Ireland photo gallery.

Quick reminder re: tonight’s meeting:

Oct 7th, 7pm, Committee room 11, House of Commons

Join Abortion Rights for an update on amendments tabled for the report stage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, and to discuss the pro choice campaign.

Speakers: Diane Abbott MP, Annie Campbell – Alliance for Choice, Kay Carberry – TUC Assistant General Secretary, Katy Clark MP, Katie Curtis NUS, Evan Harris MP, Jacqui Lait MP; Wendy Savage – Doctors for a Woman’s Choice on Abortion, Dr Audrey Simpson – fpa Northern Ireland, Polly Toynbee – Guardian commentator.

More at Abortion Rights.

And there are plenty of them this time round, people – each more patronising to us girls than the last. What a display they make, too: you rarely see such a memorable range of turds outside of safari.

Floating atop the pile is the legendary Edward Leigh’s proposal to implement a compulsory cooling-off period of seven days for women who want abortions – Ed, I guess, having finally bought into the long-held – if unproven – pro-life theory that when you shriek a faceful of Jesus at a woman for a calendar week, her maternal instinct replaces all her other ones.

This is not the first time Ed’s taken the romantic view of our man Jesus H, of course, or indeed of the miracle of life: in only May this year, Ed was to be found blazing a conservative digital trail on the Cornerstone website (whatever that is), where he described the HFEB as ‘yet another affront by the government to the Judaeo-Christian values of this nation,’ (I tend to put the 42 days’ detention legislation and the Iraq war in that category myself, but we won’t carp on that one for now) and went on to tell us that ’science has enabled us to see the child ‘walking in the womb’ at 12 weeks’ – perhaps forgetting in his enthusiasm that science hasn’t shown us a child walking much before 12 months outside of it…

These pro life amendments also flag up the notion of counselling women out of their evil propensity to put themselves first and indulge in termination: ’she [a woman wanting an abortion] should have counselling ‘from a registered medical practitioner, or health visitor (not Nurse Dorries, we pray) about the respective medical risks of, and about other matters relating to, terminating and carrying a pregnancy to term (those ‘other matters’ presumably pertaining to eternity among the dammed).

Other highlights include increasing the number of doctors required to approve late abortions and restricting abortion on mental health grounds – I will bleat no further on the details, but give you the list to read for yourselves.

Suffice to say – as Hutchins rightly does – that the sinister aspect of these amendments is that they would have ‘a very restrictive impact that would impact on all women’s rights to abortion…’ – they’re about restricting the grounds for abortion in all cases. Unlike the attempts this year to lower the upper time limit for legal abortion from 24 weeks (a gestation at which very, very few abortions are carried out), the present pro-life amendments would affect every women who sought a termination.

‘They are also problematic in terms of the support they could muster,’ Hutchins says. ‘Some of them are being posed very falsely in terms of equalities… We’ve got a job of work to do to clarify to MPs just how disinegenuous that agenda is and how damaging it would be to women.’

The other important job of work is selling an amendment to extend the Abortion Act to Northern Ireland – Janine mentioned this recently on LC. Tabled by the cross party group of Diane Abbott, Jacqui Lait, Evan Harris, Katy Clark, this one will show MPs’ true inclinations. I have already suggested that Gordon Brown might struggle to reconcile the ambitions of women in Northern Ireland with the priorities of Northern Ireland’s very own DUP – Gordon’s unlikely saviours on 42 days’ detention. ‘Well – I only know what you know,’ Hutchins smiles when I ask how far Brown is up the creek on this one.

Whatever the case with our Gordon’s deals, there isn’t much time to move: as I understand it, if criminal justice law is devolved to Northern Ireland, abortion law will devolved as well. Hutchin says that large numbers of women and women’s rights activists are inclined to get moving, as a result. Hutchins mentions Alliance for Choice, a grassroots pro choice organisation: ‘Alliance for Choice is having very well attended meetings,’ Hutchins says. ‘They have surprised themselves by the support they have been massing. They have got very good signup from trade unions, from women’s organisations, rape crises, and women’s aid centres. We’re also working with family planning in Northern Ireland – they have done a lot of work to challenge the legal framework there.’

She says Alliance for Choice will speak at next week’s Abortion Rights briefing on the HFEB and amendments at parliament. Will catch up with them there.

I’m interested to know, btw, where the Lib Dems sit on these latest Abortion Act amendments: after all, tis in the free vote arena of subjects like abortion rights that we tend to discover who is really liberal and left, and who really isn’t.

Etc.

More soon.

The part I’m really looking forward to, though, is watching our comrades in the Labour party try to reconcile any push for Northern Ireland abortion rights with the undoubtedly high expectations of their new and highly reactionary pals in the Democratic Unionist party. Can’t WAIT to see the great Harriet Harman – our very own self-proclaimed champion of women’s rights – pull that one out of her butt. What a result that’ll be for perversion.

You’ll remember the DUP, of course, and the unpalatable details of its recent, greasy love-in with Labour. You’ll remember that DUP MPs agreed to vote with the government on 42 days’ detention, in exchange for – well, in exchange for absolutely nothing apart from job satisfaction if our glorious leader Gordon was telling the truth at the time.

If he wasn’t – guess we’ll need to pretend Gordon’s a liar for a moment here – they did it in exchange for extra financial support for Northern Ireland, and for guarantees that Northern Ireland would continue to be excluded from the Abortion Act. I err towards option B.

Certainly, it was no surprise to find the HFEB and its attending Abortion Act amendments suddenly withdrawn from Commons debate in July. It was no surprise either to hear whispers that one of the reasons the HFEB left the picture so fast was that Gordon was struggling to get his new DUP mates to see the bright side of HFEB notions such lesbian parents, and abortion on demand in Northern Ireland.

Speaking as the bill was delayed, Harriet said ‘Of course the bill remains a flagship government bill … as much time as possible needs to be found for it and the other issues that the government are committed to. It would therefore be good to look for a date in the autumn….’

I had a feeling at the time that that was Harriet’s way of saying she was hoping like hell Gordon would be history by autumn, and taken his DUP deals with him.

And who could blame the old bag? We’re all hoping that.

More to come as the date for the third reading of the HFEB draws near.

In other news: the TUC has called for MPs to vote in favour of the HFEB’s pro-choice amendments – guess that’s another pie in the face for Gordon. Ain’t going so well for him at TUC conference.

xxxx

But can it be used to give women control over whether and when they have children? Only if male doctors and MPs say so.

Whoever your parents are, they’re going to fuck you up to some extent. I make no apologies for assuming that gay women and single women are just as likely to make good parents as anyone else, if not more so, as children conceived via the arduous process of IVF are slightly more likely to be wanted and treasured infants. For the purposes of this post we shall assume that one’s sexual orientation has no bearing on one’s likelihood of raising an unfucked-up child, nor on one’s right to attempt to do so. With that one out the way, let’s tuck in to a tasty breakfast of radical feminism with a gin chaser.

Throughout the wholesale technological reworking of the cultural landscape in the 20th and 21st centuries, laws remained in place to prevent new medical technologies and increased understanding liberating women’s reproductive choices. Even now, a woman must gain the permission of two doctors and undergo stringent ‘checks’ before she can access safe medical abortion. Until recently, women seeking IVF needed to declare a father and use a named man’s sperm despite the existence of plausible alternatives. But this week, in an impressive feat of anti-Luddism, MPs voted to allow single female parents and lesbian couples the right to reproductive self-determination: the right to have children, if they choose, without mandatory male interference.

‘Fathers are no longer needed!‘ screamed the headlines as the HFE Bill passed through the commons on Tuesday. Well, we could have told you that. Millions of us grew up without fathers at home or without fathers at all.

Millions more of us have loving and productive relationships with our fathers, but it is categorically not the case that any father at all is better than no father. The work of pregnancy, labour and the majority of childrearing still falls upon women, and it is inhumane to insist that that work be anything other than a sphere of self-determination. Men do not go through the physical trauma of conception, pregnancy and labour; men can have no right, as such, to insist upon any control over the process. It might be hard for individual men to swallow, but until medical technology enables them to conceive, incubate and bear children themselves, fatherhood will remain a privilege to be earned, rather than a right to be insisted on.

Reproductive rights campaigning goes far deeper than individual instances of choice. It’s a powerful cultural fascination, an issue that is woven into the very fabric of the stories that make us modern. From the rape of the Sabine women to Europa, ancient myth and precedent is obsessed by violent male control of feminine reproductive potential. From Brave New World to 1984 to the Culture, fables and fictions of the future are replete with paranoid speculation over the reorganisation of reproductive control.

The power to continue – or not to continue – the human race is quite simply the biggest social loaded gun on the planet. Since the dawn of patriarchy, male control over reproductive rights has been essential to the furtherance of patriarchal power, just as the ancient matriarchies ended when men’s involvement in human reproduction was realised.

This is why the rights of women to have children without ‘declaring the father’, to terminate pregnancy and to raise children alone, are such emotive and important legal sticking points. Women’s right to decide whether and when and how they have children is the ultimate threat to the rule of men, the ultimate insult to the divine supremacy of the father, and this week’s Commons vote is a milestone in the erosion of political patriarchy whose significance we will be debating for years to come.

The assumption of the Tories is that the vacuous notion of the ‘traditional family’ ever had any relevance. The organisation of human love has little to do with how children are raised and everything to do with the maintenance of the bourgeois state – excuse me for coughing communism onto this keyboard, I’ve got this little marxist tickle that just won’t quit.

The Embryology Bill marks a turning point in the history of patriarchy, and all of us -men and women and transpeople, feminists and libertarians and trade unionists – can congratulate ourselves on beating back the tide of fundamentalist reactionism at extremely short notice. But, since this is a fight we’re going to be called to again and again, we will have to spend the meantime coming to terms with the radical systemic social change that must be the end-point of our ideology.

The rights of women to biological self-determination, the rights of mothers to bear or not to bear children without mandatory male interference, must remain fixed points on the agenda of the British left. Men have a right to stand alongside women, a right to care for their children, a right to take up the responsibilities of fatherhood once that privilege has been granted them. Fathers have their place. But that place is no longer at the head of the table.

- George Osborne, Conservative MP and shadow chancellor, voted to keep the 24 week limit. Well done to him.

- A special thanks should be written to the MPs Evan Harris, Chris McCafferty, John Bercow and Dawn Primarolo for their unwavering support for 24 weeks.

- I have an article today on CIF on Christian fundamentalists and abortion.

- Tom Freeman reckons that a Tory majority of 38 week in the next election would make it possible for them to reduce the limit next time.

How the MPs voted
27 Conservative MPs support keeping the 24 week limit (listed below), compared to 237 Labour MPs. The Liberal Democrats are nearly split down the middle (a bit shameful for a liberal party isn’t it?) What were Simon Hughes and Sarah Teather playing at?

You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Tory rebel MPs. If one of these is your MP, email them to congratulate them

Labour and Libdem MPs who voted to reduce the current abortion limit. Email them to express your disappointment

List from the Public Whip website

This was after she said that Labour MPs were supposedly on a three-line-whip to “attend” so that they knew which way they were to be expected to vote. Desperation doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Who knows just how much of an impact the blogging campaign against Dorries has had, if any, but yesterday also saw another of the allegations against her, her connections with Christian fundamentalists,completely verified by Channel 4’s Dispatches, showing Dorries almost arm in arm with Andrea Minichiello Williams of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship.

Dorries has been moved by the programme to hysterically post on her “blog” that she isn’t a fundie, but then no one ever claimed she was. The allegation was instead that her entire campaign was being organised and funded by them, which the Dispatches programme more than demonstrated. For all Dorries’ claims of being pro-choice, as she again claimed in parliament yesterday, that she has been working with organisations completely opposed to a woman’s right to choose either makes her a stooge, a useful idiot, or a liar.

Among Williams’ more interesting views is that the Earth is only around 4,000 years old, not even the usual 6,000 as others in the fundamentalist fold usually hold.

Especially gratifying during the debate was that “Red” Dawn Primarolo still has enough fire about her from the old days to call Dorries exactly the latter, albeit in parliamentary language: “She has asserted many things as fact which are not this evening.”

Equal amounts of opprobrium ought to fall on the Thatcherite throwback Edward Leigh, who declared that “One of the most dangerous places in Britain is in a woman’s womb.” Perhaps he has something he’d like to tell us?

With 22 weeks defeated by 71 votes, the 20 weeks campaign is most likely going to have to wait another good few years before it starts its war of misleading yet again. In the meantime, some of us might well be moved to do everything possible to ensure that Ms Dorries loses her (safe) seat at the next election.

Today there will be two free votes today:

1. Allowing lesbian couples to conceive children by IVF.
Update: The bigots lost!
Iain Duncan Smith amendment (IVF clinics to consider the need for a father AND a mother): Ayes 217, Nos 292.
Lansley/Simmonds amendment (clinics to consider the need for supportive parenting and a father or male role model) – Ayes 228, Nos 290.

The majorities of 75 and 68 against the amendments means that the era of statutory protection for discrimination in access to IVF treatment is officially OVER. Sweet.
[thanks to Unity for the update]

2. Whether the upper time-limit of 24 weeks on abortions should be cut. It is my view, obviously, that the limit should remain. Laurie Penny has already offered 24 reasons for 24 weeks. Anyone who thinks the limit should be reduced because science has moved on should be shot-on-sight for pretending to understand the science and polluting our brains with their garbage.

Vote will come in around 10-11pm.
Full list of amendments at the end.

- During the debate Edward Leigh (Cons) said: “One of the most dangerous places in Britain is in a woman’s womb.” Tool.- Dorries says people who support 22 weeks are stupid. David Cameron backs 22 weeks!

LIVE COVERAGE

22:15pm Vote under way on 12 weeks (Edward Leigh)… Ayes – 71, Nos – 393, majority against 12 weeks of 322!

- 14 weeks dropped without a vote

22:26pm Vote on 16 weeks (Mark Pritchard)… Ayes – 84, Nos – 387, majority against 16 weeks of 303

Skipped 18 weeks…

22:40pm 20 weeks is up! (Nadine Dorries)… Ayes – 190, Nos – 332, majority 142 against 20 weeks

Quote of night – Dawn Primarolo on Nadine Dorries, “She has asserted many things as fact which are not this evening.”

22:55pm Moved straight on to vote on amendment 6 (see below, disability provisions only)… Ayes – 173, Nos – 309

23:04pm Cameron’s 22 week clause – if we hold here then 24 weeks is safe!

Ayes – 233, Nos – 304

If you’ve ever been to one of my liveblogs – this is Unity, BTW – then you’ll know I have bit of a tradition of throwing in the odd music video to liven things up. If all goes well then expect a bit of classic Lou Reed very shortly…

One more big vote to go – Evan Harris’s amendment to shift the two signature roadblock…

No vote on Evan’s amendment – checking whether this means the clause was dropped or allowed through without a vote!

The Post Game Show…

Can’t tell whether the amendment to remove the two signature rule was dropped or added to the schedule to the Bill – sorry, Act (as soon as I know, you’ll know), but otherwise we got everything else we were hoping for, so all that remains is for the fat lady former member of the Velvet Underground (and Dr John) to sing…

—————————
Other things to note
- An amendment is being proposed to drop the requirement for women to obtain the signatures of two doctors if they want to terminate their pregancy. Hopefully it will be passed. Women should be allowed access to abortion as safely and quickly as possible.

- From the Public Whip website, you can see how the ministers voted on the hybrid-embryos section of the bill. Well done to John Bercow and even Cameron for voting against the majority of their party. However, I don’t understand why Sarah Teather is among the six Libdems who opposed her party. The debate is on TheyWorkForYou

- After this, the Bill will go to the usual committee for amendments on finer details before returning to the floor of the House of Commons for a final vote.

- Who watched the documentary last night on Christian fundamentalism in the UK? As Unity pointed out, one of the main opponents of the HFE Bill, and featured in the programme was Andrea Williams of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship (LCF). LCF is the parent organisation of Christian Concern For Our Nation, which is funding Nadine Dorries’s campaign!

[Here's the sections featuring Andrea Williams and Nadine Dorries - Unity]

Note: The whole doc is now on YouTube: Part 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4 and pt 5
[hat-tip Mediawatchwatch. A review by Bartholomew.When will the bloody MSM make the connection between Christian fundamentalists and Nadine Dorries?—————————
Commentary
- In The Times yesterday, David Aaronovitch rubbished Nadine Dorries and her reasons for reducing the 24-week limit.- Simon Hoggart in the Guardian had this amusing sketch:

“The hon gentleman is trying to blind us with science!” said Edward Leigh, the Tory MP who tabled a motion to ban the creation of so-called “hybrid embryos”. His complaint, directed at the Labour MP Ian Gibson, was met by loud guffaws from other MPs, who had been listening to Mr Leigh for 10 minutes trying to blind everyone with his complete lack of science.
…
Mr Leigh was unabashed. A scientist had told him that he (Mr Leigh; we cannot speak for the scientist) “was 30% a daffodil and 80% a mouse. I do not believe in my soul that I am 30% mouse and 80% daffodil. I believe that we are special.”

Mr Leigh is a tool.

- The Daily Mail is “outraged“. Good.

- Sadie Smith takes apart attempts by Iain Dale and Nadine Dorries to turn yesterday’s loss into a conspiracy theory. Again.

—————————
Amendments

Amendments 1-4 on abortion deal with reductions in the upper limit to 12,14,16,18 weeks and we’re hoping for a no vote on all of these…

Amendment 5 is Dorries’ 20 week amendment and has a clause which tries to prevent abortions on grounds of disability by trying to sneak it an an equality provision tacked on to it- we want another no vote.

Amendment 6 is the abomination of an enforced cooling-off period with anti-abortion counselling clause plus a similar clause on disability and, again, a majority no vote is required.

Amendment 7 is Cameron’s cop out – I will explain later – a reduction in the upper limit to 22 weeks, and that’s another no vote if things go well.

Amendment 8 removes the two signature requirement – we’d like an aye vote on this one.

Amendment 9 is a pisstake/backup clause by Evan Harris, John Bercow and Chris McCafferty for a limit of 23 weeks and 6 days. If the line holds on 1-7 then expect this to be dropped without a vote.

Amendments 10 and 11 are clauses from our side which clean up the legal definition of 24 weeks, which should go through if we carry everything else.

Amendments can also be ‘negatived’ without a vote if the House agrees that its not worth taking them because they have no chance of success.

Leading Labour pro-choice MP Emily Thornberry is youngish (47), new to the national scene (first elected to parliament in 2005), able to talk a blue streak (she was a criminal lawyer), charismatic, and – at first interview, anyway – refreshingly disinterested in caution.

Truly disinterested, even: she says and does – apparently – anything. She freely describes some Labour colleagues as Neanderthals.

She says that others hold views that she thought died with the 1950s. She takes a worthy – if unusual – pleasure in winding up the myriad police that patrol the Houses of Parliament. Giggling like a fruitcake, she marches us past security and up to the HoP’s terraces (possibly the terraces that Plane Stupid comandeered for their Heathrow-runway protest a month or two back?) and lets us photograph her there, even though the coppers on the terraces twitch when they see the camera and call in a couple of reinforcements.

She is either keen to be shot, or of the refreshing opinion that a future for a Labour politician might just depend on distinguishing oneself from the flinching, centre-ground-hugging nambly-pamblies who are so responsible for the grovelling tone of Labour today.

She’s loyal – particularly to Gordon Brown, out of whom she must scare the living shit. Ditto, no doubt, for moribund pretenders like Charles Clarke, Jack Straw, and Whatisface Miliband – the one whose wide and startled eyes so consistently put one in mind of a fawn that has suddenly felt a finger up its butt.

I’d trade a whole ounce to see Thornberry laying some of her better lines on prissy old turncoats like Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith: ‘I was a student when [John] Corrie was trying to cut down access to abortion. I come from a generation that used to go on the street shouting “Corrie – Withdraw, like your father should have!’ Brilliant. I can almost feel Harriet pursing her tight little dog’s-bottom mouth.

Still – it is depressing, Thornberry says, to find yourself having to campaign to protect existing abortion legislation in 2008. As we speak, she and I are slumped over the 14 May notices of amendments for this week’s reading of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill: as most of you will already know, the usual conservative/hysterical suspects are proposing a range of alternatives to the present 24-week time-limit for legal abortion: 12 weeks, 14 weeks, 16, 18, 20 and 22.

Like many on the modern pro-choice scene, Thornberry is a liberaliser: she wants to see better access to legal abortion, and the removal of some of the more stringent aspects of the Abortion Act as it stands – the requirement for two doctors’ signatures for women who want abortions, etc. She’s right to say it is depressing to find the existing Act threatened.

That’s not the only depressing part, though. Some of us find it depressing that the Labour party is now such an ideological shambles that the pro-life drivel being peddled by the likes of Nadine Dorries can compete as a political option.

Thornberry says that Dorries is marginalised and unlikely to have much influence, but she also says that the 24-week limit is seriously threatened this time round in her view – an admission which rather suggests that the fuss the likes of Dorries has generated has given even supposedly liberal MPs pause for thought.

Thornberry says that even MPs she thought of as pro-choice are trying to romance her with compromises on the 24-week limit. For instance: some have tried to tell her that an acceptable pro-choice compromise would be to cut the time limit to 22 weeks, but to liberalise other aspects of abortion law at the same (remove the requirement for two doctors’ signatures, etc).

‘They think that is a pro-choice position,’ Thornberry laughs. ‘People have said [to me] – “you can have compulsory sex education in schools – you can have whatever you want, Emily, but let’s [agree] to cut the time limit back to 22 weeks…”‘ Thus Labour dithers about a woman’s right to choose – a fight it should rise to as a matter of course, and a territory it should so easily make its own.

Thornberry says that I can dream on about Gordon Brown positioning his troops either way: ‘It’s absolutely true that the party hasn’t whipped this… He’s not going to. Get over it. Ha ha ha.’ Probably best not to put your last buck on the Labour left, either: Thornberry says that she sees herself as part of the soft left in Labour, but ‘we are the most disorganised group… it’s hopeless, really. The couple of times when I’ve voted against the government, it’s been with a group of comrades, but we’ve been all over the place.’

Thornberry points out that Labour traditionally has taken a liberal view on abortion rights: one can only hope, then, that when the vote on the time limit is taken this week, this tradition turns out to be one of the few Labour hasn’t abandoned.

Thornberry says that she likes to think that a pro-choice stance (and a rigourous defence of the 24-week limit) can be a vote-winner, even in a marginal seat like her own. ‘Largely, the feedback [from her constituents] is positive… MPs – they don’t want it to be their issue, because it is so divisive… They (MPs) are mostly men. They’re not going to think about abortion, and they are afraid that if they put their head above the parapet, that the Catholic lobby… the Baptist lobby… whatever it is… [they] will lose their seats.’

I say Manure to that. Labour MPs are going to lose their seats regardless. Even a two-week reduction to the legal time limit will be a pro-life, rather than Labour, victory.

Cross posted with photos at hangbitch.com. Was too useless to organise photo uploading here, etc.

1) Consistency is not really her strong point, Bookdrunk said yesterday when Unity blogged the amendments Tory MPs are proposing to the HFE Bill. There’s Mr Edward Leigh supporting amendments to reduc the limit to 12, 14 or 16 weeks and there’s Nadine Dorries supporting reducing the limit to 20 weeks and 16 weeks! Is she not conviced by her own arguments?

But you see, that isn’t her ultimate agenda and neither is it of these other mysogynist MPs.

Dorries herself actually favours a reduction down to 9 weeks. No really, we’re not lying because she admitted it herself (via Unity).

And if Nadine Dorries is so pro-choice, as she keeps complaining, why is she so anti-Emily’s List, as the NHS blog doctor quite rightly asks. Cue the silence from Iain Dale and Tim Montgomerie…

2) You’ll find this even more scary. The chair of the pro-life group of MPs, Jim Dobbin, is a supporter of Nadine Dorries’ campaign. The pro-life group is also behind the Passion for Life campaign. His view:

Jim Dobbin, chairman of the pro-life group of MPs, said he would like to see the current limit halved. “We would like there to be a number of amendments where you can start from a lower limit, say 13 weeks,” he said.

These people really can’t make up their mind eh?

And what else does he say?

That is another issue, for another debate, but my personal view is against contraception.

And these people are supposed to be our elected representatives!!

3) Oh and then there’s the Christian Medical Fellowship, which is supporting many of the earlier mentioned campaigns.

Dr Peter Saunders, general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said his group was supporting 20 weeks as a first step. “It gets a lot of people on board and gets us on the way,” he said. “We have to realise we are in for a very long battle here.”

With lots of science abuse, not doubt. Don’t worry Dr Saunders, we’re organising for the long haul too.

4) Then there’s Christian Action on Research and Education (CARE), also a partner on many of these campaigns. This is published on their website:

Pro-Life parliamentarians and the Christian Charity CARE have expressed great concern at the passing of the Resolution ‘Legal Abortion in Europe’ by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg) yesterday (April 16th) by 102 votes to 69 with 14 abstentions. Among other things, the Resolution claims that women have a right to access safe and legal abortion, and calls on all member states to decriminalise abortion ‘within reasonable gestational limits’.

Bring back the coathanger! (via septicisle)

5) The pro-life alliance want to ban abortion entirely.

All these groups and people are supported by the Passion For Life and the Alive and Kicking. In other words, supporters of the people funding Nadine Dorries’ campaigns want to ban abortion entirely.

And yet she still claims to be pro-choice? Who actually believes it?

Related:
The case against Nadine Dorries MP (pt 1)
Who is funding Nadine Dorries MP’s campaign?
Nadine Dorries MP and her hoax science
Are lefties guilty of ignoring abortion rights?

(’Sunny delights’, GEDDIT!!! – Sorry, bit of a Glenda moment there, only to be expected when you’re monitoring Dorries)

…but in the mean time, the list of amendments to be debated on 20th May is mounting up, necessitating an update.

As far as the upper time limit for abortion goes, the current list (with sponsors) looks like this:

Claire Curtis-Thomas and Daniel Kawczynski have also put forward a complete abomination of an ‘informed consent’ clause which would require women to be offered counselling by a health care professional but informed of:

the embryonic and foetal development at two weekly intervals and the physical, psychological and psychiatric risks associated with the termination of pregnancy, including a description of the methods of termination at different stages of pregnancy and any risks associated with such methods

In addition to being given:

the contact details of adoption services and other sources of help and advice, (including information on any disability or abnormality that the pregnant woman’s embryo or foetus is at risk of suffering from if born).

It’s an interesting ‘take’ on ‘informed’ consent, as it requires women to sit through an entirely unethical attempt to persuade them to change their mind, while counselling support is merely an optional extra.

Obviously, the ‘Awwwww, look at the cuuuuuute baaaaaby’ clause needs to be opposed as the only ‘informed’ element in it is that the clause informs us of the identity of another pair of parliamentary arseholes.

And if that’s not enough to slake your thirst for information, let me chuck in a little plug for the latest episode of Debunking Dorries over at the Ministry, where you’ll encounter the truth about Dorries’ claims that Britain is at risk of becoming the abortion capital of Europe and that we have most liberal abortion laws in Europe, plus all the usual bits of creative swearing and alter boy gags.

Yeah they will often make the right noises, but they will make excuses for anti abortion men such as Galloway, and yet I can’t see them being quite so tolerant if someone was, ooh let’s say pro-war. But abortion is a women’s issue isn’t it, it’s not quite up there with the serious male leftie men and their real politics about war and arguing the toss over the finer obscure theoretical points of Marxism or who did what when to whom in 1983.

That’s not to say the majority of the left aren’t pro choice and I’m not going to bang on about Galloway as it’s pointless. Back to the subject, the left and pro choice, why should they get their finger out on this?

Much has been said on this, so I will try to focus on what I see as specific issues for the left, starting with the fact that working class women are those who lose out the most when abortion rights are restricted. Money has always helped procure such services from discreet private doctors.

Working class women, pre 1967, had to make do with the back street abortionists and the resultant risks to health, potentially fatal.

Some on the left get caught up by the reasons for abortion and then sympathise with the conclusion that abortion should be restricted or is a bad thing.

Many argue that it’s wrong that women should have to have an abortion because they can’t afford a child. Well yes, but the answer is not to make it illegal, all that does is put those women at risk. The left need to fight for better childcare, benefits, wages.

Even with improved finances some women may still decide that they don’t want more or even any children and that should be their right. And some won’t feel bad about it or suffer psychologically, especially without the guilt trips from others .

An issue that the left should grapple more with is disability rights.
People with disability are often angry that it’s a ground for abortion. Are we trying to create perfection? On the flip side some with a disability, such as the hearing impaired, argue for the right to have a child with the same disability as them.

Now within the world of disabilities there is a wide spectrum. There was a case a while back of a teenager in Ireland who came to Britain for an abortion. She was refused it at home even though the baby would have died very soon after birth so severe were the disabilities. This case illustrates the lack of humanity of some anti abortionists, who would make a young girl suffer like that . No matter what we do, situations that sad will probably always occur.

Greyer areas are more complex. The reality is that, adopting a social model of disability, its society that causes the most problems. People with disabilities have less chances to earn a good wage , expectations of what their life will be like is lower and benefits inadequate. The physical environment is disabling. Many people, the left included, are still patronising and paternalistic to those with disabilities. Parents, and especially mothers, struggle to care for and bring up a child.

So what should the left’s response be to the conflicting views of women’s and disability rights?

I would argue the left must support the current rights women do have and argue for their extension as well as challenging the way disabled people are viewed in society, campaigning for better support for parents and their children with disabilities.

We should challenge what is the norm and the increasing pressure for ‘perfect’ children, to argue for difference and diversity in people. We do not though make it more difficult for women to have an abortion and force them to have a child they do not feel they can cope with.

Finally, some point to left currents that are not pro choice, Nicaragua being one such example.

Nicaragua highlights the dangers of the left going along with religion and ignoring women’s rights. In Nicaragua it is a crime to have an abortion, even if the woman’s life is in danger. A report last year in the Guardian highlighted the costs to women of this law. It hits the poorest:

This central American country has become the third country in the world, after Chile and El Salvador, to criminalise all abortions. It is a blanket ban. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or life- or health-threatening pregnancies.

“Nicaraguan doctors are now afraid of going to trial or jail and losing their licence,” says Leonel Arguello, president of the Nicaraguan Society of General Medicine. “Many are thinking that instead of taking the risk, it is better to let a woman die.”

For the Nicaraguan rich, a problematic pregnancy need not be a death sentence. You can fly to Miami or bribe a discreet private clinic in Managua. But in this wretchedly poor country most young women do not have money. Their choice is to go through with a pregnancy that may kill them, or attempt a DIY termination that may kill them.

As a result of the blanket ban enacted last November at least 82 women have died, according to advocacy groups.

The anti-abortion camp, in contrast, is euphoric. The new law, it says, is a beacon in the fight to protect the unborn. It is time to celebrate. “Now it is all penalised. And Catholics agree that is should be this way,” says Roberto González, 50, a Franciscan priest in Managua. “The population sees the church as behind the law – behind the pressure that succeeded in getting the government to change the law.”

The stories highlighted in the report show it’s the poorest who are most affected, that young women die and children are left without a mother, often going into care. I expect many of these women were catholic, allowed to die for the sake of a foetus that didn’t even survive.

The left needs to keep this in mind when it bows to religious groups. Where abortion is limited or illegal women die, the poorest suffer the most. It does not stop abortion happening, it does not reduce the causes and reasons for abortion, it does not mean people are more accepting of disability or difference. The left need to focus on reducing the causes, not excuse religious reactionary views on what women can do with their bodies .

The left needs to campaign to improve disability rights, access to good sex education and contraception, tell religious leaders to butt out and work to improve the rights, support and attitudes to disability and difference.

The left should accept that whatever we do to improve the financial situation of women, availability of contraception and quality of sex education, attitudes to disability and support available, that women still have control over their own bodies. That control should not lie with men, the state or any religious groups. It lies with the woman: ‘our bodies, our choice’.

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A longer version is posted on stroppyblog.

1) On March 19th Nadine Dorries MP published a blog-post titled The Hand of Hope, which featured this image of a small hand apparently coming out of a uterus. She said:

When the operation was over, baby Samuel, at 21 weeks gestation, put his hand through the incision in the uterus and grabbed hold of the surgeon’s finger, a gesture which was apparently met with a huge amount of emotion in the operating theatre. Dr Bruner said that it was the most emotional moment of his life and that for a moment he was just frozen, totally immobile.

Except, it was a hoax and Dr Bruner himself had said so. This was pointed out on several blogs including LC and Dorries wrote another post defending her actions with the view that the photographer, a born-again Christian, should be believed over the surgeon (who she had earlier quoted herself).

The Hand of Hope also makes an appearance on the pictures and video section of her new campaign. In other words, a member of parliament is actually perpetuating a hoax that has been debunked several times.

In many ways, this sums up her entire campaign.

2) Her 20 reasons for 20 weeks includes the assertion that:

17. The British Medical Association’s opposition to lowering the limit is not supported by the majority of its members and almost 1,000 BMA members recently signed a petition against attempts to further liberalise BMA policy.

Except that doctors from the BMA overwhelmingly voted against reducing the 24 week limit.

3) She also claimed initially that Marie Stopes International favoured reducing the 24 week limit. This was not the case.

A proper debunking of Nadine Dorries’s 20 reasons can be found at rhetorically speaking.

4) Yesterday, she wrote more rubbish on her blog.

“Antediluvian”
That’s how John Bercow, the Conservative Member for Buckingham described members, (inc me) who want to reform the abortion law. He also used words such as prejudiced. Antediluvian isn’t a word you hear much on the housing estates across Britain, so I had to ask what it meant. Before a flood apparently.
…
All faiths, including Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and Christians are all antediluvian. But of course, John Bercow must be right and I believe that maybe the three quarters of women across Britain are grateful to him for being there to point out the error of their judgment.
…
Professor Anand, incredibly well respected and acknowledged as the world’s leading expert in foetal pain, believes that a foetus feels pain as low as 18 weeks gestation.

This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Firstly, there is no religious consensus on abortion, even if people followed their faith to the letter.

Secondly, where’s the evidence that 75% of women share her view? What she has are a series of opinion polls carried out by ComRes over the last 3-4 years, all of which were commissioned by pro-life organisations and all of which follow the same basic format, even if the wording and ordering of some questions differ slightly from poll to poll. Do they prove that 75% of women share her view? No, but they are a near classic example of the art of manipulating opinion poll results by means of careful use of leading questions and are almost deserving of a case study in their own right.

And then there’s Dr Anand and the other scientific evidence that Dorries claims supports her position…

5) She said in a recent article:

Yesterday’s report on neonatal survival rates, along with resounding evidence produced by the world’s leading foetal pain expert, Professor KJS Anand, that a foetus feels pain from quite an early stage – certainly at 20 weeks – makes the recent science and technology committee report redundant. It also serves to highlight the selective way in which the evidence was presented.

The report on neonatal survival rates is a study conducted by Professor John Wyatt of University College London Hospital (and the Christian Medical Fellowship) and, of course, there’s the inevitable reference to Professor Anand and an attempt to write-off the report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee as biased and out of date.

There’s no easy way to tackle the science. It’s complex and pretty impenetrable to anyone who doesn’t have a reasonable background in the sciences and that’s what Dorries is relying on in this debate. Many people don’t have the knowledge or skills to work their way through the evidence, so they have to trust what the men (and women, of course) in white lab coats have to say – and Dorries would rather you trust her ‘experts’ rather than anyone elses.

Tackling the science is difficult but not impossible. The Science and Technology Committee report (pdf) is as good a place to start as any and commendably clear in its assessment of the evidence. For the UCLH study by Professor Wyatt, try Ben Goldacre’s assessment of Wyatt’s evidence to the Science and Technology Committee (ST&C).

The relevance, or rather lack of relevance of Professor ‘Sunny’ Anand’s work on foetal pain is discussed by Unity here at his own blog and again at Liberal Conspiracy in the wake of a staged public ‘debate’ organised by Dorries. Anand is an excellent physician and respected academic in his field, but his field isn’t abortion and at best his work on foetal ‘pain’, much of which remains theoretical and far from conclusive at this point in time, amounts to no more than an argument for the use of foetal anaesthesia in late-term abortions and not one that supports a reduction in the current upper limit.

All of which leaves us the final plank of Dorries’ “scientific” arguments, Professor Stuart Cambell’s ‘4D’ ultrasound scans, which have some small value as an aide to diagnosing physical abnormalities but which provide about about as much information about critical areas of foetal development, such the brain and respiratory system, as the animated dancing baby that used to appear on Ally McBeal.

Even Dorries’ favourite anti-abortion doctor, Professor John Wyatt had to concede to the ST&C that “at the moment I think the consensus is they do not add a great deal in terms of the science.”

But who is behind this campaign? Is it just Ms Dorries? The website doesn’t say. On the Q&A page however it does have this question: Is this a religious campaign?. Answer: “No. There are people of all faiths and of no faith who support this campaign.”

But that’s about it. Shouldn’t we be told who is running a campaign fronted by a Conservative MP?

I say this because thanks to Unity we can provide the answer. A search on the domain name reveals that it was registered by David Clark. Email address: david@ccfon.org.
That email address is a give-away because David Clark is in fact one of the founding members of Christian Concern for our Nation.

In other words, Nadine Dorries is fronting and representing campaign without declaring that is in fact being run by a religious group that: “exists to serve the Church by providing information to enable Christians to publicly stand up against a tide of unchristian legal and political changes in the United Kingdom..”

If this is indeed a campaign specifically by Nadine Dorries MP, then a Christian group is funding it. The website specifically says it is not a religious campaign yet it is funded and most likely designed by a religious organisation that is not listed anywhere.

CCFON launched its own anti-abortion website recently called Alive and Kicking. AaK is linked to from the 20 weeks website in numerous places.

CCFON is close to the Conservative Christian Fellowship (CCF), which was co-founded by Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome and includes Caroline Spelman MP as one of its members. The website says that: “For many years the CCF has been hosted within Conservative Campaign Headquarters.” Sweet.

The all-party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group recently also launched its own anti-abortion website: Passion For Life, registered incidentally by a certain Ian Lucas at parliament. Lucas is a trustee of the CCF.

The Passion For Life website advises readers to use the CCFON briefing pack to speak to MPs about the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill.

Why doesn’t Nadine Dorries MP openly declare her campaign’s links to Christian Concern For Our Nation and state that is being funded by that organisation?

————————
[Yesterday I pointed out how Nadine Dorries has, I believe, broken parliamentary rules and have submitted an official letter of complaint to that effect. All this week we'll be exposing the Tory MP's campaign here on LC]

Thanks to Unity and Tim Ireland for their research.

Write to your MP!

Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, with parliamentary colleagues, at an event in support of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, which will protect and extend the right of scientists to perform crucial stem-cell research.

More about all this at the Coalition for Choice website.

See the website for more about our aims.

To mark this launch we have a week of Nadine Dorries MP on Liberal Conspiracy! We will illustrate how this Conservative MP:
- has consistently misrepresented the arguments around abortion;
- is fronting campaigns by Christian groups without declaring so;
- is promoting hoaxes on her websites;
- has frequently and wrongly smeared reputable journalists and scientists;
- hides her true long-term intentions on the issue of abortion

You might already be familiar with some of these allegations. However, we plan to publish a dossier by the end of the week with all the information so it is all in one place. But first:

Today I am lodging a formal complaint with regards to the conduct of Nadine Dorries MP, specifically in relation to the misuse of the parliamentary Incidental Expenses Provision allowance, for the purpose of conducting party political/campaign activities contrary to regulations.

It is my view that Nadine Dorries MP has broken parliamentary rules numerous times by using her blog for the purposes of campaigning. I am sending off a letter of complaint, published here.

The letter of complaint (pdf)   |   Evidence of complaint (pdf)

This letter of complaint is relevant to the CfC campaign because many of the criticisms levelled by Nadine Dorries MP on other MPs relate to their pro-choice stance. This letter and other evidence forthcoming this week has been put together by researchers, various Liberal Conspirators and bloggers elsewhere (who will be noted duly).

Support the Coalition for Choice – write to your MP

(this will help you compile an email)

Facebook Page – join it!

She and a claimed ‘coalition of 200′ MPs are calling for a reduction in the time limit on legal abortion from 24 to 20 weeks, despite a lack of evidence that fetuses can survive outside the womb before that point and despite the fact that most women are against further reductions in the time limit.

First of all, we must recognise this duplicitous campaign for what it is: no more or less than a brazen attack upon women’s rights. The fact that it’s being spearheaded by a (privileged, rich, white, Tory) woman makes absolutely no difference: an attack on the time limit is an attack on the self-determination of all British women, everywhere. We live in an age without foolproof contraception, so this isn’t a case of ‘stupid women forgetting to take their pills’ – condoms break, hormones fail, and absolutely anyone can find themselves pregnant against their will.

Until the time when free and foolproof contraception is universally available, abortions up to at least 24 weeks will be a necessary medical service. To argue differently is to argue that women have no right to self-determine and that the choice of what to do with their own lives and bodies is better made for them by (normally male) doctors and Tory MPs. This latest attempt to whittle away our rights to choice has been tacked on to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, a bill which is otherwise fundamentally sound.

The Bill tables for the second time on the 12th. Pro-choice MPs have, until now, been too timid to add their own amendments to the bill, and we remain on the back foot, fighting to save our basic rights to self-determination.

The anti-choice MPs’ squeal of protest flies in the face of recommendations by the all-party Commons science and technology committee, which was specifically called last year to consider all the evidence, and concluded there was none to support a reduction in the upper time limit. But Mrs Dorries, who sits on the committee, and another member refused to back the report, as a result of which women in the UK are facing another serious threat to their reproductive rights.

This is an attack on women, pure and simple: if it wasn’t, Tory debate wouldn’t be focused so much on the spectre of the ‘unborn child’, it would be focused on the rights of children who have already been born, millions of whom live in abject poverty minutes from Mrs Dorries’ own front door. Not to besmirch Mrs Dorries’s credentials as a bleeding-heart tory, but more children die on the roads every year than are the ‘victims’ of late-term abortions.

Mrs Dorries’ attack is an unsubtly pitched mash-up of truth manipulations and outright lies. Yes, some infants can feel pain after 18 weeks in the womb – but the press coverage neatly neglects to mention that it’s standard practice to use anaesthetic when carrying out late-term abortions. The notion that 2/3 of the British public are calling for a reduction in the time limit is flatly refuted by research carried out by Abortion Rights UK.

Dr Evan Harris MP and numerous other spokespeople are adamant that reducing the time limit would hit out against the most vulnerable of women – the young, the poor and the mentally ill – but that’s not going to stop Mrs Dorries, who has never been poor and believes that young, poor, unstable and/or immigrant women are moral sinkholes who need to be saved from themselves. The words used in one report were ‘protecting the unborn child from the whims of the mother’.

Mrs Dorries and her followers claim that ‘2,500 lives’ will be saved every year if the time limit is cut – neglecting to see the obvious parallel that for every ‘life saved’ when an unwanted pregnancy is carried to term, another life – that of the mother – is ruined.

But Mrs Dorries doesn’t care, because Mrs Dorries doesn’t like other women, particularly poor women, immigrant women, young women and women who have suffered psychic traumas, who make up the majority of requests for late-term abortions.

Fortunately, I’ve got a brilliant idea to solve this problem. The next, ooh, let’s say four babies put up for adoption by mothers who missed the termination time limit should be shipped out to Mid Bedfordshire and deposited on Mrs Dorries’ doorstep. She’s got a great big heart, so she’ll be just thrilled to look after them. And she’ll be only too happy to take on an equivalent cut in wages and go on state benefits. No more prime minister’s question time for you, Mrs Dorries – you’ll be down at mothercare with the rest of us worrying about whether you can afford a new pair of booties for Child 4, and you’ll goddamn like it.

Feminist Fightback urge committee MPs to help us throw out this reactionary, misognynist amendment, by voting it out of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. We’re counting on you.

Liberal Conspiracy, along with The F Word, are also launching a campaign to support the HFE Bill, in the coming days. See the website here – Coalition For Choice. Spread the word and support our campaign!