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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   34545 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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Apparently, the UKGBNI is set to completely decriminalize abortion in England and Wales when performed by the woman (not when performed by a doctor). According to Reuters and BBC, under existing law abortion by a doctor is legal up to 24 weeks and a woman can perform an abortion on herself with prescribed pills up to 10 weeks. In contrast, the new law—approved by 73 percent of the House of Commons—appears to permit abortion right up to the point of birth when it is performed by the woman.

Text of the law (on pages 108–109 of the PDF; part of a much larger bill):

Tonia Antoniazzi, NC1

To move the following Clause—

Removal of women from the criminal law related to abortion

For the purposes of the law related to abortion, including sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy.

Member's explanatory statement

This new clause would disapply existing criminal law related to abortion from women acting in relation to her own pregnancy at any gestation, removing the threat of investigation, arrest, prosecution, or imprisonment. It would not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting, including but not limited to the time limit, telemedicine, the grounds for abortion, or the requirement for two doctors’ approval.

Is there an actual justification for this anywhere or is this just "women can do no wrong" crystallizing into law?

I preface this by saying it is entirely devil’s advocacy, but it seems like this sort of legislation would be logically coherent under the ‘libertarian violinist’ pro-abortion argument. It’s the woman who is inconvenienced by having another person strapped to her circulatory system, so she has an excuse to get away with murder. No-one violated the NAP on the doctor, so he doesn’t have an excuse.

It’s the woman who is inconvenienced by having another person strapped to her circulatory system, so she has an excuse to get away with murder.

You mean after she (in 99.5% of cases) voluntarily did the one specific thing that creates people?

I think the take is usually "even if someone gives fully informed consent to have a violinist attached to their circulatory system, they have the right to remove him at any time, even if it causes his death and they agreed not to initially." There are people willing to bite the bullet on this.

What I always wanted to know is, having bitten that bullet, how do they justify not biting the bullet on infanticide, or extermination of the non-self-sufficient.

The pro-life side will probably happily point you to the apparently slippery slope of MAID in Canada (and elsewhere): have you considered euthanasia as a treatment for PTSD?

America had legal abortion from 1973 to 2022 and no such slippery slope was encountered.

I'd actually say we've seen America do nothing but slide down the slippery slopes since the 70s. It may not have taken the exact same form at the exact same pace as Canada, but it's still tumbling down.

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