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WillowOne's Positions

Abortion

My Positions

  1. Provided a person can reasonably be understood to grasp the implications, is capable of making a clear and rational judgement under the circumstances, and is acting without coercion, they should have the right to obtain an abortion, under the guidance of a medical professional, up to 21 weeks.
  2. After 21 weeks, given the increased medical complexity, greater emphasis should be placed on professional medical judgement. Where a qualified medical professional determines that a late-term abortion is the most appropriate course of action, it should not be prohibited by law.
  3. Abortion is a medical matter between a patient and a doctor. The state's role is to ensure it is safe, available, and free from coercion in either direction, not to adjudicate the decision.
  4. I reject the framing of the question as "when does life begin?" Life is continuous; the sperm and the egg are alive. The relevant question is when a developing human acquires interests that can be weighed against those of the person carrying it, and that is a question of neurological development, not of conception. There is no reason to believe a foetus has any capacity for experience before the thalamocortical connections form, at around 24 weeks.

Notes

  • My 21-week position is slightly more restrictive than current UK law, which permits abortion up to 24 weeks under the Abortion Act 1967 (as amended 1990), and beyond that where there is a serious risk to the mother's life or health or a substantial risk of severe foetal abnormality. In practice around 90 per cent of UK abortions take place before 13 weeks and under 2 per cent after 20 weeks, almost all of the latter for medical reasons. The difference between 21 and 24 weeks is therefore of little practical consequence, and I hold it loosely.
  • Restricting abortion does not reduce the number of abortions; it reduces the number of safe ones. The WHO estimates that around 45 per cent of abortions worldwide are unsafe, almost all of them in countries where abortion is restricted, and that unsafe abortion is a leading cause of maternal death. The countries with the lowest abortion rates are those with liberal abortion laws, good sex education, and freely available contraception.
  • The most effective way to reduce abortion is to reduce unwanted pregnancy. Those who oppose abortion while also opposing contraception and sex education are not, whatever they say, trying to reduce abortion.
  • The US context. The US Republican Party began using abortion as a significant political issue in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Before this, abortion was not a strongly partisan topic, and many Republicans supported abortion rights. The Republican embrace of abortion as a key issue was driven by strategic, cultural, and religious factors rather than by moral opposition from the outset. Abortion was identified as a mobilising issue capable of galvanising the emerging religious right, particularly evangelical Christians, into reliable Republican voters.

Key developments (United States)

  • 1973, Roe v. Wade: the Supreme Court ruling legalising abortion nationwide marked a turning point. Conservative religious groups, especially evangelical Protestants and Catholics, began to organise politically in opposition. Notably, the Southern Baptist Convention had passed resolutions supporting abortion access in 1971 and 1974.
  • Late 1970s: strategists such as Paul Weyrich and organisations such as the Moral Majority (founded 1979) began mobilising evangelical Christians. Abortion became a rallying issue to unify conservatives, particularly in the wake of the IRS's action against racially segregated Christian schools, which was the issue that first brought the religious right together but which was unusable in public.
  • 1980, Ronald Reagan's election: Reagan, who had signed a liberal abortion law (the Therapeutic Abortion Act) as Governor of California in 1967, shifted right and embraced the anti-abortion position during his presidential campaign. This solidified abortion as a Republican wedge issue.
  • 24 June 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization: the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a 6–3 decision, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion and returning the authority to regulate abortion to the individual states. The majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, held that abortion is not a right protected by the Constitution. Within a year, abortion was banned or severely restricted in around a third of states.

Personal Context

  1. I have never been directly involved in the decision to abort a pregnancy.
  2. I have had friends whom I have supported in their decision to abort a pregnancy.

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