When we wrote yesterday about the waves of opposition to the decision by the (British) Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute abortionists who were willing to abort female babies, I began by remarking that a “hornet’s nest of outrage” had followed this indefensible [non-]action. (See “Controversy follows decision not to prosecute British abortionists accused of willingness to practice sex-selection abortion.”
But that’s proven to be not the half of it.
Understand that abortion on demand in Great Britain seems to woven into the very warp and woof of British culture. If you think we’ve had a long uphill battle, we have nothing on pro-lifers in Great Britain.
But the CPS’s decision to fob off what is clearly a crime under the 1967 Abortion Act to the General Medical Council, which oversees doctors but has no criminal powers, is reverberating louder and louder as the days pass.
Without rehearsing the entirely of yesterday’s post, the CPS argued prosecution was not in “the public interest,” which is—to put it politely—bizarre.
Daily Telegraph columnist Philip Johnson explained how there are two separate conditions that need to be met before prosecution goes forward. The CPS agreed it had met the first condition (the law had been broken and there was a realistic chance of conviction) and two of the three tests for the second condition—public interest—but not the third.
“It is the third test – the impact on the victim – on which this issue turns,” Johnson wrote. “The CPS has evidently decided there was no victim in this case because the terminations did not happen. But that is like saying that would-be bank robbers should not be prosecuted because they failed to carry out their plans when they were rumbled or their car crashed.”
But there is much more to say about this case, which began when the Daily Telegraph did some sleuthing and found abortionists willing to abort women who said they did not want a baby girl.
Take Cathy Newman, a “Presenter” for Channel 4 News. She hems (support for prosecution) much more than she haws and her piece serves a useful purpose for two reasons. First, as we all know, no matter how egregious the violation, no matter how far beyond what a vast majority of the population would tolerate (see late abortions), pro-abortionist instantly retort that any attempt to correct this is the fatal step down the slippery slope ending with the abolition of all abortions.
For example, Newman brings up the “personal statement” of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt which, she tells us, is that “the legal limit should be cut to 12 weeks.” As we discussed yesterday Hunt wrote Attorney General Dominic Grieve.
“We are clear that gender selection abortion is against the law and completely unacceptable,” Hunt wrote. “This is a concerning development and I have written to the attorney general to ask for urgent clarification on the grounds for this decision.”
Click “like” if you are PRO-LIFE!
Newman muses aloud whether Hunt’s “outrage at the CPS” is part of a supposed “broader attempt to whittle away at abortion rights more generally.”
But her column is useful for a second reason: her last two paragraphs in which she demolishes the straw man she herself had created.
“But this isn’t about being pro-choice or pro-life. This is about an alleged breach of the law. Where are the pro-choicers publicly condemning the CPS decision? Admittedly one, the Tory MP and GP Sarah Wollaston, tweeted this morning: ‘I’m not anti-abortion, but selective abortion of girls harms women & reinforces misogynist attitudes. Why isn’t that issue public interest?’
“I couldn’t have put it better myself. Others now need to make their voices heard so that this is seen for what it is–a failure to tackle illegal and misogynistic behavior–rather than another salvo in the battle to curb abortion rights.”
Space does not permit more than a comment or two about a thoughtful column written for the Telegraph by Tom Chivers, a self-described pro-choicer. The headline says it all: “Pro-choice feminists should be more appalled than anyone by the sex-selection abortion story.”
One of his most important points is that thus far he hasn’t heard anything from his pro-choice colleagues. That silence “implies that people are OK with sex-selective abortion (which will be mainly selecting against female foetuses). Perhaps some people are. I’m not…”
Chivers then runs off on a tangent before coming back on point:
“But mainly it’s because the implication is that female children are worth less, that a boy is what you want. That is the attitude in many parts of the world. It shouldn’t be. It is wrong. You may feel a woman’s autonomy over her body overrides such concerns, but if so, the case must be made in the light of this story, not by ignoring it.”
Reprinted with permission from NRLC