So that is that then. The ultra powerful pro-abortion lobby defeated the Fiona Bruce amendment that sought to clarify the law prohibiting abortions on the grounds of gender.
There are two points we can take from this defeat. First, the pro-choice lobby is one of the most powerful special interest groups around.
And second, there is absolutely no agreement or shared ground in the UK between pro-life and pro-choice groups.
One would think that no sensible or civilised person could oppose a measure that sought to clarify the law making it explicitly illegal to terminate a pregnancy on the grounds of gender. It is a no brainer in the liberal West. But it seems not.
The pro-choice lobby opposed it on the following Alice in Wonderland grounds.
1) It is not needed as abortion on the grounds of gender is already illegal.
2) Abortion on the grounds of gender is legal, and so it should be.
If a woman wants to abort because her unborn child is female then that is her right, says Ann Furedi, CEO of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. She maintains that “sex selection, like rape, may not be a ground for abortion, but there is no legal requirement to deny a woman an abortion if she has a sex preference, providing that the legal grounds are still met.” So the CEO of Britain’s largest abortion provider believes that termination on the grounds of gender can be lawful. For good measure she states, ‘You can’t be pro-choice except when you don’t like the choice, because that’s not pro-choice at all.’
3) The amendment used the term ‘unborn’ and this is just terrible and runs a coach and horses through the Abortion Act 1967. This is despite the fact that other Acts regulating this area use such humanising terms.
4) This amendment was proposed by a pro-life person therefore pro-choice MPs should not support it as all pro-life people are evil.
Dr Sarah Wollaston, Tory MP, believed this amendment had another ‘underlying agenda’. It was a ‘Trojan Horse’ she maintained. But MPs do not vote on agendas, they vote on amendments.
This amendment would have made it illegal to terminate female foetuses but still the pro-choice lobby opposed it as it came from Fiona Bruce MP. However, it was inevitable that the amendment would have to come from a pro-life MP because a pro-choice MP will never, ever propose anything that restricts access to abortion even if that restriction is on something that they believe should be restricted anyway. Confused? Indeed, it is a confusing stance.
For the pro-choice campaigners, any law that reduces access to abortion, even one that saves the lives of female foetuses, must be opposed. It is a matter of principle even if in practice this means sacrificing a few unborn girls on the feminist alter on the way. They are merely collateral damage.
The truth is that the pro-choice lobby are in fact pro-abortion. They believe that abortion is a ‘social good’, as Anna Furedi, CEO of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service believes. If you want more abortions then you are not going to want any measure that reduces it.
