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Memo to MPs: Britain is not America

Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images

Goodbye then, Roe v Wade. The US Supreme Court’s decision this week to overturn its ruling on abortion will effectively ban the practice across swathes of America. Millions of Americans are angry; politicians have been quick to proclaim their shock and dismay. But this is Britain, home to some of Europe’s most liberal abortion laws, where self-aggrandisement and West Wing syndrome mean that our own virtue-signalling politicians can’t resist shoehorning themselves into the debate.

Thus far only one elected politician appears to have publicly expressed any kind of support for the decision: Scott Benton, the unorthodox MP from Blackpool South. The tangerine Tory’s (quickly removed) retweet of a celebratory Republican party post was immediately seized upon as proof of a wicked Conservative plot to introduce the Handmaid’s Tale, or something. Quick out the gates was Ash Sarkar of Novara Media who declared ‘There are men in our Parliament who’d take women’s rights back to the Victorian era if they could.’

Next up was Stella Creasy, the achingly right-on Walthamstow MP who never met a camera she didn’t like. The Labour progressive tweeted breathlessly that:

You think what you see in America couldn’t happen here? Then you don’t understand who is organising in UK politics. No one thought American Supreme Court would ever overturn a right previously granted either. These attacks on womens rights won’t stop. Be prepared.

When pressed for, er, any proof that such ‘organising’ was taking place in the UK, Creasy pointed to the debate earlier this year on at-home abortion pills. This consciously ignored the fact that the debate was over a loosening, rather than a tightening, of abortion restrictions that had initially been intended only as a temporary response to Covid.

Helen Morgan, the newly-elected MP for North Shropshire, meanwhile chose to broadcast her own constitutional illiteracy to the world by tweeting to fox-killing QC Jolyon Maugham: ‘Does the ECHR currently protect a woman’s right to control her own body in the UK, and if so does Raab’s Bill of Rights threaten it?’ As Levins solicitors pointed out in reply: ‘the right to abortion in England, Wales and Scotland is provided for in the Abortion Act 1967.

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Steerpike
Written by
Steerpike

Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike

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