• At least one of the organisations that spawned Abortion Rights was avidly in favour of abortion being legal until birth. Former National Abortion Campaign steering committee member Fiddy Jones stated, “N.A.C.’s policy is that there should be no legal or medical restrictions to the availability of abortion. This means we are opposed to any upper time limit on abortion.” The current director of Abortion Rights, Anne Quesney, was Campaign Co-ordinator for N.A.C. Should we accept that the powers-that-be suddenly had a total change of heart as N.A.C. evolved into Abortion Rights? Or is it in fact more likely that they considered the softly-softly approach to be better, tactically speaking?

• Abortion Rights has been collaborating closely with a political party whose extreme position on abortion is second to none. The Communist Party of Great Britain’s constitution calls for free abortion on demand, with no mention of a time limit. Its newspaper, the Weekly Worker, stated “we must step up the fight for the untrammelled right of abortion on demand - as early as possible, as late as necessary (1)." Abortion Rights has been holding regular meetings with the party to discuss a joint campaign, but it seems that staff are not too keen on this being exposed. Following such a meeting, the Weekly Worker reported about one of their Abortion Rights collaborators, “She complained about the reporting of previous meetings in the Weekly Worker. . .The message was clear - these meetings are secret and should be kept that way (2).”

• Any consistent campaigning organisation would surely only feature articles on its website which agree with its principles. Yet the Abortion Rights website has an article written by Ann Furedi, chair of B.P.A.S., in which she admits her personal opinion that abortion on demand should be legal until birth, using the familiar mantra: "women should have access to abortion as early as possible and as late as necessary."

• An Abortion Rights newsletter criticised the U.S. partial-birth abortion ban and talked about the need to “. . .better understand and state the reasons for post 24 week abortion (3).” Added to the fact that Abortion Rights has never explicitly stated that it is against later term abortions, it’s easy to get the impression that its stated aims are only a stopgap for what it would really like to achieve.

• When an investigation found that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service were breaking the law by referring women, who wanted post-24 week abortions, to Spain, Abortion Rights defended B.P.A.S.’ action and stated: ‘There should be a provision made in the law for women who need the services at a later stage,' (4).

• Even disregarding all previous evidence, many of the goals of Abortion Rights are still fairly extreme. It supports the present legal situation that allows abortion until birth for disability – a law that has permitted late term abortions for such relatively minor conditions as cleft palate, as Joanna Jepson’s court case highlighted. Also, despite the fact that there is now overwhelming support for lowering the 24 week limit for non-eugenic abortions, Abortion Rights is adamantly opposed to any reduction in the present time frame for abortions, even to 22 weeks - a point at which premature babies have been born and survived, thanks to medical advances. Indeed, following the latest 4D images which shed new light on the humanity of the unborn child, Sir David Steel, the architect of the Abortion Act of 1967, has called for the limit to be reduced to 12 weeks and has been supported by many from the pro-choice camp. The insistence of Abortion Rights to defend dogmatically the present limit is therefore out of kilter with the views of many people who are not ethically opposed to abortion per se.

In light of these revelations, it is utterly deceitful for Student Unions to illegally affiliate with such a controversial organisation whilst claiming it is moderate. Abortion Rights is by no means of the imagination representative of the views of the majority of students.

References

(1) Weekly Worker, 8 July 2004

(2) Weekly Worker, 18 November 2004

(3) Summer 2004 Newsletter, Abortion Rights

(4) The Scotsman, 11 October 2004