ROE V WADE

The baby and the bathwater

I remember 50 years ago being a daft young lassie who thought abortion was always wrong, never to be permitted and should be illegal. Then I sneaked a look at the broadsheet News of The World and learned of the pain, misery, destruction, infertility and death caused by back street abortions. Once you know what those involve, you’ll banish metal coathangers from your home forever.

In later years my education, especially in the law as it relates to families and women and how men can behave toward women, involved knowledge also to be avoided – about rape and incest and coercion. 

I know people conceived and born as the result of rape and incest.

I know rapists.

I know men who are sexual predators.

Every family and criminal lawyer in Scotland (and the world) knows the people I know.

I know women who tried to kill themselves because they were abused and raped and women I used to know succeeded in that.

Abortion services are health services, health care, part of a necessary public health service provided by responsible government.

But this abortion issue comprising a rash disfiguring a nation which has lost its way is only the beginning; there’s mass hysteria on both sides and here in Scotland we have the ultra uber pious telling us what a bad move this is.

Those same Scots, some of whom are our rulers, are the ones who erase the rights and protections of the Equality Act 2010 – they don’t even understand what it means or signifies, as they trash it. So you’ll be pleased that I am here to remind you – Sex is a protected characteristic. Gender identity is not. Only women can become pregnant. Men cannot be pregnant. Men don’t need abortions. Only women do. Only women will ever need abortion services because sex is immutable. 

Those who rule us in breathless gasps of faux outrage directed towards Washington are best reminded of their duty to uphold the law and to protect the rights we women have – for our safety, protection and dignity. A right to health care to abort a baby cannot survive in isolation – health care rights include the entitlement to a single sex ward, toilet and female medic. Biological sex explains Roe v Wade and underpins all other sex based rights – sex, every time, sex not gender. Keep that principle upon the fingertips and women’s rights in Scotland will remain safe.