Urgent Action Required! Tories propose anti-choice Ten Minute Rule Bill
Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has put forward a Ten Minute Rule Bill calling for a reduction in the time limit for abortion and mandatory delay in service provision:
Ten Minute Rule Bill: TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY Mrs Nadine Dorries
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to reduce the time limit for legal termination of pregnancy from 24 to 21 weeks; to introduce a cooling off period after the first point of contact with a medical practitioner about a termination; to enable the time period from the end of the cooling off period and the date of termination to be reduced; and for connected purposes.
This attempt to restrict women’s reproductive rights is especially distressing considering it comes during Pro-Choice Action week and NUS Women’s Campaign’s Pro-Choice and Proud of it! Campaign.
Direct Action: Please email or phone your MPs office and ask them to be in the Chamber on Tuesday 31st October, from 2.30, to vote against this attack on women’s rights. Find out who your MPs is and their contact details at www.locata.co.uk or call the House of Commons switchboard on 020 7219 3000.
Here is a brief run down of the arguments against such a Bill from the organisation Abortion Rights. Alternatively, you can access more information on late abortion and ‘cooling off’ periods at the website www.abortionrights.org.uk
Later abortion – rare but desperately needed
Only a tiny proportion, less than 1 per cent, of abortions take place between 21 and 24 weeks. They are needed by women facing exceptional and very difficult circumstances, most commonly because of late diagnosis of pregnancy or problems, women in denial because of trauma, NHS delays or catastrophic changes in the woman’s life circumstances. Neither the women nor the doctors involved take the decision lightly.
Enforced delay – unnecessary and distressing
Enforcing a ‘cooling off’ period after a woman has made her decision is a key part of the anti-choice lobby’s agenda. Such delays have been imposed in several US states and in Australia and are frequently accompanied by a legal requirement for the woman to read misleading anti-choice literature. The agenda is part of a condescending and baseless narrative that women are not capable of, and frequently don’t, take such profound decisions about their life with seriousness, thought or discussion. In reality women already frequently face unacceptable delays in a ‘postcode lottery’ of service provision. Women can wait up to eight weeks, forcing many to turn to the independent sector and hundreds of pounds in fees. Any mandatory delay in the process would cause significant further distress and delay to women.
No law needed to reduce waiting times
NHS delays in abortion service provision are a product of the decisions taken by individual Primary Care Trusts not by law. This Bill is unnecessary to improve women’s access to services.
Pro choice lobby of parliament!
We are mobilising for a National Lobby of Parliament. We will be lobbying our MP’s to commit to protecting our current reproductive rights. And we will be demanding that the current time limit for abortion be maintained.
The Lobby on 22 November will run from 11am – 4pm, with a public Pro Choice meeting in the evening at 7pm where several high profile speakers will address us!
For more info and to register your interest, please download this flyer
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