Decriminalising Abortion

Debate between Stella Creasy and Emily Darlington

Monday 2nd June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ms Creasy]

I understand the position that the hon. Member is taking. Many of us believe that somebody standing at an abortion clinic and feeling the need to pray there, rather than in a church or 150 metres away from the abortion clinic, is not silently praying but intervening on the privacy of the person accessing an abortion zone. That is why this Parliament—[Interruption.] I can hear the hon. Gentleman chuntering. I want to make some progress, but let me be very clear: those of us who recognise that safe access zones balance rights in the best way recognise that the hon. Gentleman is not alone in continuing to attack them. The vice-president of the United States has sought to attack our nation’s ability to protect women’s access to abortion clinics via safe access zones. The threat that we are facing is therefore not theoretical.

[Emily Darlington]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, as have all hon. Members who have spoken today. I am lucky never to have had an abortion, but I have had two miscarriages, and I cannot tell you how vulnerable I was at that time. Anybody coming up to me at that point would have made me feel even more terrible than I already did. I have friends who have had abortions, and it is a terrible choice to make, for whatever reason anybody makes it. Whether the child would not survive or was a child of rape—for whatever reason that choice gets made, nobody makes it happily. Does my hon. Friend agree that the reason there are exclusion zones is that the human rights of that woman, who is going through one of the worst times of her life, must be protected at such a horrible time?

[Ms Creasy]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for giving that personal testimony. What she touches on is what we have seen in the debate in this country for several years now: the expectation that women should give a reason why they want to have an abortion or seek that kind of medical care. That is why the Trump playbook being brought into British politics—as we now see it is—is so dangerous in this context. When the leader of Reform, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage)—I note that he is not here to defend his views—talks about the “ludicrous” nature of our laws and calls for a reduction in the time limit, he is not thinking of all those people who get that horrific diagnosis. He is sending a bat signal to his colleagues and fellow travellers in America: that under his watch it would be open season in this country—