Womb to Tomb: Britain's strange new politics

Or: Why half-measures are often much better than full ones

The nature of the news business these days is such that the circus never stops. It must move or die. Stories or subjects that might once have commanded attention for some time instead come and go in not much more than the blink of an eye. Everything must happen faster. Sometimes we even come close to the platonic ideal of all this: reacting to events before they have even happened. By the time that, say, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has delivered a major update it is already Old News. The pre-reaction - an ugly term but, alas, a useful one - renders the actual event almost superfluous. Eventually we shall reach the stage where news does not even have to happen for it to have still, in this limited sense, kind of happened nonetheless. For the reaction sometimes seems as important as the action. And so, on we go, rushing headlong towards whatever is next, never pausing for breath or anything so antiquated as contemplation.

I am not convinced this is entirely healthy.

In recent weeks parliament has made two very significant changes to the law and, by consequence, to the way in which we consider life itself in the United Kingdom (or, to be more strictly accurate, in England and Wales since these modifications do not apply elsewhere in the realm). This may seem a bold claim but it is also one firmly anchored in reality. For how else should one interpret the decisions made by MPs to effectively decriminalise abortion and to introduce state-sponsored assisted dying? The meaning of “life” is not the same this week as it was just a fortnight ago.

Let me say clearly, for the record and so on, that there were good arguments for each of these legislative changes. Many people, plenty of them persons of good sense and good will, backed one or other of these proposals and many, indeed, supported both.

Yet there were also, I think, good grounds to be concerned by each of these parliamentary votes and just as many reasons to be agitated by certain aspects of the way in which both these discussions were conducted and how those worried by potential unintended consequences have seen their own good faith objections traduced.

It is not uncommon these days to encounter MPs declaring that they “didn’t get in to politics” to do anything so dull as “deal in half-measures”. Well, let me say this: half-measures are precisely the business of politics. In many areas, a half-measure is actually the best available outcome. This is not mushy “centrism” so much as it is a recognition that competing arguments may be equally valid. A politics which awards all the prizes to one side and nothing at all to the other is one heading for a very dangerous place. It is not always the case that an outcome is acceptable if everyone is at least a little unhappy with it; it is just often the case that this is true. Politics is the art of refereeing difference; compromise is inherent to it.

So, consider abortion. There is a deep and wide consensus on this issue. The overwhelming majority of people in Britain believe abortion must be permitted in the early stages of pregnancy. A majority of people also oppose abortion in the later weeks of pregnancy, save in certain, narrowly-drawn, exceptional circumstances (the mother’s life being endangered, for instance). This is fuzzy but reasonable and realistic. It is a compromise lacking the bracing rigour of the purest pro-life and purest pro-choice positions but it reflects, on balance, public opinion.

It does so by rejecting the pro-life view that personhood begins at conception while also saying No to the pro-choice belief that it only begins at the moment of birth. For most people, the development of personhood - the creation of a new human - is a process more than it is a single event. It takes place over time and, again for most people, it happens sometime after the mid-point of pregnancy.

Britain’s abortion laws have hitherto recognised this. Abortion is illegal save when conducted under certain conditions. Generally speaking, abortions must take place before the end of the 24th week of pregnancy and with the approval of two physicians.

Terminations after that point are permitted in unusual circumstances but women who curtail their pregnancy after 24 weeks may find themselves investigated by the police and, sometimes, charged under the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act. This does not happen often but it does happen (and has begun to happen more frequently in recent years) and I think one need not possess too much empathy to understand how, in the case of miscarriage for instance, such investigations may often, indeed may usually be, invasive and blunt and traumatic.

Last month, however, MPs voted to decriminalise the actions of women who abort their pregnancies after 24 weeks. This was hailed as a great progressive victory. It remains an offence for a doctor to participate in such a termination (an amendment decriminalising that, sponsored by Stella Creasy, was defeated) but a self-administered abortion - something made possible by drugs easily purchased online - is a different thing.

I do not doubt the good intentions behind this. Nor do I dismiss the real pain endured by women who have been prosecuted and then acquitted of procuring an illegal miscarriage. And yet, well, these seem dangerous waters nonetheless.

It is true that abortion has not been, as some pro-life voices have argued, legalised after 24 weeks but it is also true that decriminalising it functionally amounts to much the same thing. The liberal view was perhaps most vehemently summarised by ex-BBC man Lewis Goodall:

What will change is the possibility of prosecution for the small number of women caught up in Victorian-era legislation, women who are often vulnerable, young, poor or destitute- ending up in court for an act born of the terror of what might be, or for something outside of her control. Imagine the horror of a young woman being forced to explain herself, her medical history, the facts and realities of her body to the state, to avoid prison time. It is a theocratic nightmare. That, and that alone is what Parliament has sought to change. The idea that this will unleash a wave of women aborting viable babies just before due date is absurd and offensive. The idea that this is a legalisation of abortion on demand is absurd and offensive. Worst of all, it all yet another reminder of the unfortunate MAGAification and debasement of British political discourse- the ongoing online pickling of a certain type of increasingly extreme radical right brain.

There is plenty to unpack here. The standout case in recent years (which Goodall also refers to, albeit in passing), is that of Carla Foster. She discovered she was pregnant in December 2019 but only procured abortion pills (by post) the following May. This required to her to state (falsely) that she was no more than ten weeks pregnant. She entered labour on May 11th, giving birth to a stillborn child. She was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant.

Initially charged with child destruction, she subsequently pled guilty to a charge of administering drugs to secure an abortion (covered by the “Victorian” Offences Against the Person Act). She was sentenced to 28 months in prison, a judgement subsequently reduced on appeal to a 14 month suspended sentence.

This was a most unusual and difficult and appalling case. But if there is to be a time limit to abortion then there must be consequences for inducing abortions after that time limit has passed. If there are no consequences then as a functional matter there is no longer a time limit within which abortions must take place (subject, again, to the now familiar exceptional circumstances).

Almost no abortions currently take place beyond that time limit. It seems unlikely that many more will take place beyond it in the future. But, contra Goodall, it is surely not “absurd and offensive” to assume some more may do so than was previously the case. In fact I should think it probable that more such terminations will take place now the sanctions - rarely applied anyway, it might be noted, for here again the Foster case was unusual - have been ditched entirely. Decriminalisation is not the same as approval but it sidles closer to approval nonetheless.

Note, however, how Goodall assumes that concerns about any of this are part of a “theocratic nightmare” and that people unpersuaded that abortion at eight months is really no bit deal are extremely right-wing and radicalised and brain-pickled. (Some may well be but there are plenty of others - Janice Turner and Hadley Freeman, to name but two leftish women columnists from my own stable - who quite obviously are not.)

Britain’s abortion laws were already extremely “progressive”. Abortions must typically take place within 14 weeks of pregnancy in France and 12 weeks in Germany, for instance. I am not persuaded either of these countries qualify as a theocratic nightmare but accept that your mileage may vary on this.

But we must always be vigilant against the threat of Britain turning into the United States of America. Well, indeed, there are plenty of aspects of contemporary American political culture that we might do well to keep at bay. These are not, however, exclusive to the American right. Plenty of dangerous and rotten and deeply stupid ideas are imported from American progressives too.

I think you have to be quite one-eyed to only see one side of this. Back to Mr Goodall:

Regardless, the current regime, and the inquisition it unleashes on a handful of women, was a moral and political disgrace, and it says much about many of the commentators who bloviated on the matter that they not once seemed to enter their thinking. All that mattered was their ersatz-MAGA culture war outrage and the clicks they could generate with it.

Well, for some, sure. No doubt. Again, I recognise the appalling circumstances in which some women - this handful, in Goodall’s phrase - may find themselves. People who find themselves in an awful situation may easily make difficult, but also awful, choices.

But I can also recognise that for many people the idea of abortion weeks beyond the point of viability is completely different from abortion weeks before it. You do not need to be a theocrat (it is axiomatic that people concerned by this are driven crazy by Jesus and funded by Americans) to think induced miscarriages at this point of pregnancy are something close to, well, murder. It says much about many of the commentators who bloviate on this matter that those soon-to-be people not once seem to enter their thinking.

The law serves many purposes. One of these is the business of sending signals. It may be in the public interest to sanction these kinds of late-term abortions even if it is not always in the public interest to prosecute people who technically break the law here. Consistency can be over-valued too and the detail of individual cases must matter and must make a difference.

In its wisdom, however, parliament has decided that the detail never matters and no sanctions should ever be imposed, regardless of circumstance. I do not think you need an over-active imagination to conceive of occasions in which such sanctions might be useful and even, if perhaps only and with luck very rarely, necessary.

Agency is all, however, and the political mood runs in favour of granting it without asking too many questions. If Person A wants something, who is Person B (represented here by parliament) to tell them they cannot have it?

This, in some respects, is what has underpinned the debate on assisted dying too. At an individual level many of the arguments for it are eminently reasonable to the point of becoming most persuasive. Many of us might like to control our own demise in this fashion if the alternative was a prolonged and miserable period of excruciating illness: “It’s my life, so it’s my death too”.

Framed like this it would be unkind not to endorse assisted dying even if it should also really be termed accelerated dying. It is, you see, a question of individual autonomy that is also, crucially, interpreted as a matter of fairness.

We know this because one argument regularly made by assisted dying’s supporters is that the current situation is intolerable partly because it is also unfair. That is to say, we should not tolerate a situation in which AD is available to those with the wherewithal to travel to Dignitas in Switzerland but unavailable to those who lack such means. If the wealthy may end their lives like this, the poor should be able to as well.

You may note that this is not an argument for assisted dying that is made on its own merits but I think we should also be aware that it may prove a template for future arguments made about assisted dying. That is, we should anticipate that, assuming Kim Leadbetter’s bill survives its encounter with the House of Lords (who would, I think, be wholly within their rights to throw it out completely), future arguments will hinge on perceived questions of fairness too.

I do not think it requires much imagination to foresee the circumstances in which the argument is made that if Person A, suffering from condition B and in circumstances C, is deemed eligible for an assisted death then Person D, suffering from condition E and in circumstances F, should also be permitted to hasten their own demise. If it is fair for one person, it would be unfair to deny someone else the same right even if their circumstances differ quite significantly.

For once the principle is conceded, all that’s left is haggling over the detail.

This is the case regardless, I think, of whether or not you believe AD is a good idea whose time has finally come. The safeguards included in the Leadbetter bill may or may not be sufficient (your mileage will vary on this) but it seems obvious to me that as soon as you legalise assisted death in this fashion you will encourage more people to opt for it. Indeed, from the perspective of campaigners: what would be the point of introducing a regime that was actually almost impossible to access?

That may help to explain why Leadbetter’s supporters are keen that there be relatively few constraints upon advertising or marketing AD and why special measures must be allowed to target “hard to reach” groups or those “communities” hitherto strangely unenthused by assisted dying. Sometimes it is hard to banish the thought that some (not all, I stress) of the bill’s backers are also edging perilously close to the recruitment business.

And of course when something is made more freely available we should expect it to become more popular. Abortion provides a case in point. Now it is possible to take abortion drugs at home, abortion rates have increased to their highest-ever level:

I make no value judgement on this beyond noting that I think Bill Clinton’s view that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” is about as close as we can realistically come to solving all the dilemmas that abortion confronts us with.

I further assume that assisted dying will become increasingly popular with time. Sometimes this will be because people freely and knowingly wish to take control of their own departure. Sometimes it will be because - and I am convinced this will happen - eligibility criteria has been expanded. And sometimes it will be because people will decide they are a burden on others and that an accelerated death is the kindest thing for their surviving relatives. Coercion can be self-imposed and believed to be real even in circumstances where it does not actually exist in reality.

Again, experience elsewhere offers some pointers. In Canada, nearly five percent of deaths in 2023 were accelerated by the state. We are supposed to be reassured by the fact that “96 percent” of these were for people with a terminal condition and not notices that this means that around 600 Canadians without a terminal illness nevertheless had an assisted death. Further expansions are considered likely in the years to come and something similar has been evident in the Netherlands, where a depressed person in their twenties may nevertheless be deemed a suitable candidate for a state-sanctioned and state-enabled early death.

Could the same happen here? I should expect it to be more likely than not. At some point, assuming the passage of the Leadbetter bill (and the comparable McArthur bill making its way through the Scottish parliament), we should not be surprised if an anorexic girl is granted the right to an assisted death. It has happened plenty of times in other jurisdictions. Once that happens, once that bridge is crossed, you are wholly into the realm of normalisation which in turn must serve to popularise accelerated deaths.

You may think this no big deal and on an individual level you may well be entirely correct. But it feels like something large nonetheless, especially when thought of at a system-wide or societal level. It feels like something profound has shifted.

Hence this muddled, muddy, inadequate compromise: the purpose of the law is not always to punish. Sometimes it is to signal. In the cases of the late-term ending of a pregnancy or the premature end of a life, the law is there as a guide but that is not the same as to insist that prosecutions in exceptional and very difficult cases are necessarily in the public interest. As a general rule, we might expect them not to be. The law is there but this does not mean it must be used. Changing the law and removing sanctions all but guarantees, however, that these procedures will become increasingly common.

We might not wish to punish those who technically transgress right now but does that require us to encourage more people to follow their unfortunate or unhappy or otherwise difficult example?