We always knew that the defeat of Nadine Dorries’ attempts to shrink women’s access to later term abortions was not the end of the fight. Many activists have been tallying up and shaking their heads at the small shift in the Commons needed at the next election to catapault enough Tory MPs into power to make a dent in the pro-choice, Labour-led majority.

But as zohra posted a few days ago, we can’t pause for thought even till the next election, as Dorries has tabled yet another anti-abortion amendment to the HFE bill in an attempt to force yet another vote. This is considered extremely bad manners, and may be thrown out for breaching the informal understanding preventing the same issue being debated again and again on the same bill.

Now, however, is the time to push forward and use this moment to liberalise abortion laws. Because Evan Harris has also proposed an amendmentment to get rid of the requirement for two doctors’ approval before women can have a termination. Abortion Rights is calling for us all in the UK to write to our MPs lobbying them to support this amendment. They have produced two model letters - one to send if your MP voted for and one to send if they voted against the attempts to cut the time limit.

Liberal Conspiracy has a whole set of excellent posts up on this - Kate rallies the troops, while Unity has more info on the issue of whether Dorries broke the rules on funding her website, the website she used to spout anti-woman propoganda including the dreadful 20 reasons for 20 weeks, which you’ll remember Laurie answered.

Photo by me

Posted by Jess McCabe on 1 July 2008, at 10:27 PM | Comments (1)