Years ago a man told me that I was being paranoid about abortion rights. We’d been drinking wine all afternoon and for some reason I threw in to the conversation that my biggest fear about Donald Trump’s 2016 presidency was the roll back of reproductive freedom. I remember vividly him taking a drag on his cigarette and saying “not going to happen” before moving on to talk to someone else more fun. And I’ve thought about him, and his certainty, every time there has been a significant step towards the erasure of a woman’s right to choose.
So I thought of him again today when I read that Nigel Farage had weighed in on the regulations about abortion. Speaking to reporters at a Reform UK press conference, Farage was asked whether he thinks that the term limits on abortions are too late. He said: “You know, is 24 weeks right for abortion, given that we now save babies at 22? That, to me, would be worthy of a debate in Parliament.”
If you are someone who believes in reproductive freedom, you should be very, very worried about this. Because this is always where it starts.
Fewer than 1 percent of abortions are performed around the 24-week mark. In fact, in 2022, 0.1 per cent of the abortions which took place were performed around 24 weeks. The majority of the time if an abortion is performed at this stage, it’s known as a TFMR – termination for medical reasons. Which means that the baby has a medical condition which is extremely unlikely to be compatible with life. Rather than being forced to continue carrying a non-viable pregnancy, women are given the option to give birth early. This enables them to begin grieving and in many cases, to allow them to recover from the process and try again to conceive.
These abortions are always the ones weaponised because yes, the idea of a premature baby being terminated is deeply emotive. But that’s not what’s happening here. This is a case of much wanted, much loved, desperately mourned babies being given a peaceful goodbye – whereas 88 per cent of UK abortions are performed before 10 weeks.
Late-stage abortions are an easy target, and they’re only the starting point. Once you’ve agreed that 24 weeks is too late, what’s next? In the US it’s now six weeks in some states, if not banned completely. To clarify: when you are pregnant enough for it to register on a pregnancy test, you are four weeks pregnant because pregnancy is dated from your last period. That would give you two weeks to decide you want to terminate, find and in some cases fund an abortion. Lots of women with irregular cycles, especially teenage girls, don’t know that they’re pregnant until at least six weeks.
But I don’t think Farage cares about any of that.
Most anti-choice activists are religious, but Farage self-identifies as a “lapsed Anglican”, saying on GB News recently that he “used to believe in it”. He’s also not historically authoritarian. In fact there was a time where he might reasonably have been called a libertarian, opposing “nanny state” culture and actively disliking legislation such as the smoking ban.
So why is Farage talking about it? Because he’s following a blueprint laid out by his friend and inspiration, Donald Trump. I understand now that it’s not about what these people really want morally. It’s about power. And if you can whip up enthusiasm around an issue, you can take power. It’s also a dog whistle – a way of making sure that your followers know that you’re conservative, that you can take ownership over women’s bodies, that you will control what people are able to do if it falls outside of the social norms you’re trying to preserve.
I had an abortion, the better part of a decade ago. That abortion is a turning point in my life. If I’d had to carry on with that pregnancy then I would not have the daughter I am currently raising, the career which supports us both or any of the years of freedom I needed in order to be ready to become an excellent parent.
Whenever I express my terror at the idea of abortion being rolled back in the UK, someone will tell me that it can’t happen here because we don’t have the same religious culture. And that’s true – our leaders don’t tend to talk about God all the time and we are a less overtly Christian country. But we are a country ripe with disharmony and that makes people very easy to manipulate.
I don’t think that the same “God hates abortions” rhetoric would work here, but what might work is the terror of a looming birth crisis and ageing population.
Fear is a dangerous and powerful tool and if enough people in this country think that banning abortion is going to protect them, then I’m afraid our rights to control our own bodies will be thrown on the bonfire.
I’m worried – really, deeply, truly worried. And if you’ve got a uterus, or you love someone who has one, you should be too.
