Around the world, the antis are joining forces. Whether anti-abortion, anti-transgender, anti-immigrant, anti-human rights or just anti anyone who doesn’t look like them, they are collaborating; amplifying one another and sharing their political and cultural successes. Their rhetoric now dominates our discussions, and increasingly our ballot boxes. In response, some argue caution or even capitulation – as if we can stop the public being dragged to the extremes if we speak in hushed tones or water down our ambitions for social justice. As we witness the consequences of this, it is time to speak up for those values that drive us to show that another future is possible.
On Tuesday, parliament had the opportunity to set abortion in England and Wales on the same modern, regulated footingas it is in Northern Ireland: as a human right. Instead, a vote on this was explicitly blocked by the providers of this service and their supporters, telling MPs to back another amendment, to get a single exemption from prosecution for women “over the line” instead.That is what happened. In contrast, my proposed amendment would have gone further, offering “protection to all those involved in ensuring that women can access safe and legal abortions”.
In the current parliament, any pro-choice amendment would have passed. A critical opportunity not just tostop the destructive prosecutionsand investigations under outdated laws of everyone, including medics, but to also protect access for the 250,000who have an abortion every year, has been missed. As a result, the laws that make abortion a criminal act remain, ready to be exploited by those who wish to attack access should they come to power.
With the Donald Trump playbook increasingly dominating our politics, such judgments about what to fight for and when will become even harder – and even more important – in the coming months and years. Even when presented with evidence of the risks to women’s rights, progressives in the UK retain a confidence that isn’t merited. US colleagues warn of the compromises made in the Barack Obama and Joe Biden years on securing abortion rights that left them so exposed. Although Trump pledged not to get involved in abortion as an issue, within his first week back in office he signeddirectives to attack accessas well aspardon those who harassed clinicians.
Many in the UK may have been shocked bythe overturning of Roe v Wade, but to those working on abortion access, it was entirely predictable. Pleas to get ahead of these forces fell on closed ears there and have now done the same here. Now, US medicsfight extradition chargesfor providing abortion care to those who have crossed state lines to access one. Legislatorsreclassified abortion medicationas a dangerous substance to reduce access. Funding for family planning clinics is being cut off as well as international programmes that support women’s healthcare – all in the name of promoting family values.
Networks using women’s bodies as the battlefield for the culture wars are not just in the US. Across Europe, restrictions on access and bans are being put forward and won by far-right political groups once in office. In Poland, abortionhas been effectively bannedsince 2020. In Italy, under Giorgia Meloni, anti-abortion activists are now beingencouraged into abortion clinics. Under Viktor Orbán, women in Hungary seeking an abortion are now required tolisten to the foetal heartbeat repeatedlybefore treatment. The cross-pollination of hatred across issues such as immigration, gender and ethnicity exists on this topic, too. Across the world, these forces whip up allegations of “abortion at birth” or “sex selection”. Our mainstream newspapersrepeat these claims, claims that have no foundation in the medical evidence, but deter those with the power to protect women’s rights from acting for fear of appearing to endorse such acts.
Events of this week reflect how these ideologies and those who follow them are already defining what those on the left consider possible in office. But those on the right will not stop their attacks because we pull our punches – indeed, they will become increasingly emboldened, believing that they have us on the back foot.
As the culture wars intensify, the left needs to set out not its blue roots, but its true roots, showing how, at its best, it delivers emancipation. That means telling a story that recognises how poverty, inequality and injustice take many individual forms but are collectively devastating. Each holds back people in every community from realising their potential, to the detriment of all of us who will not benefit from what their talents can achieve. Rights – whether human, reproductive or economic – act as a launchpad for such freedom. Ours vision for the future is one in which equality liberates the ability to succeed – whatever race, sex, religion or age you are, or what political view you hold.
In the coming months and years, attacks on progressive values will intensify. As we face them, let this missed opportunity to reform our abortion legislation so that it is fit for the 21st century, remind us all that half measures are not what we are in politics to take. In politics, as in life, fortune favours the brave, and the alternative possible future that these forces wish to snatch from our children compels us to fight for it – not least because we know those opposed to it will never be satisfied.
As we face what comes next, regret has no place in our toolbox for securing progressive outcomes. But remembering this moment and learning from it is vital.
Stella Creasy is the Labour and Cooperative MP for Walthamstow