A FEW weeks ago the Tory government announced its decision to devolve abortion law to the Scottish Parliament through the Scotland Bill, which is currently being negotiated in Westminster.

This move has been fiercely opposed by left forces and women’s rights organisations such as Engender, the STUC, Amnesty International and Rape Crisis Scotland, who fear that it could pave the way for anti-abortionists to lobby the Scottish government in order to undermine the current law.

Thirteen organisations and charities signed a joint statement to MPs which said “our concern is that this strategy of hasty devolution is being used in order to argue for regressive measures and, in turn, a differential and discriminatory impact on women and girls in Scotland.”

The Labour Party also opposed the changes, with equalities spokeswoman Jenny Marra saying: “Scottish Labour firmly believes that the safest way to protect the current legal framework around abortion is for it to remain at UK level, where there is a strong consensus around the current time limits.

“Leading human rights and women’s groups have said that devolving abortion law could undermine the right of women to make their own decisions.”

This issue has of course arisen before, and devolving control of abortion law was first considered in the early days of the Scottish Parliament.

However, Scotland’s then first minister Donald Dewar argued that it would be better to reserve the issue at Westminster level in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament coming under pressure from religious groups to change the law on pregnancy terminations.
It now remains the only part of health which has not been devolved to Holyrood.

Many critics have raised the example of Northern Ireland, where abortion is fully devolved and where, due to enormous pressure from religious groups, the law states that women and girls can only terminate a pregnancy if they can prove that their lives — physically or mentally — are at risk.

In practice this means that if you are raped you cannot legally get an abortion. Or if you find out during the pregnancy that the foetus has a fatal abnormality, you can’t legally get an abortion.

There are many other terrible circumstances which women and girls may find themselves in and in which they cannot legally terminate a pregnancy.

Each year thousands of women and girls leave Ireland in order to get an abortion. This disproportionately affects working-class women and young women, who may not have the funds to make such a journey and may also not want their family to know.

There are fears that if the current 24-week limit is reduced in Scotland, women may have to travel elsewhere to terminate a pregnancy — an option which is just not feasible for many women and girls.

SNP MPs have strongly supported the move to devolve abortion law and joined with religious pro-life MPs such as Liberal Democrat John Pugh, Tory Fiona Bruce and Labour’s Robert Flello to call for the law to be devolved.

The SNP argues that it supported the move because they want more powers for Scotland and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has stated she supports the current 24-week limit.

But the SNP — along with the Greens, who also supported the devolution — must and should be aware of the situation they may have helped create with the devolving of this law.  

It is important to note also that there are anti-abortion elements within the SNP and we have to bear in mind that millionaire Stagecoach boss and evangelical Christian Brian Souter, who has donated hundreds of thousands to anti-abortion charities, has also donated millions to the party.

The Catholic Church, a bulwark of the anti-abortionist camp, has a lot of sway in Scottish communities, and its influence extends over parts of the left in Scotland too.

Catholics have generally always been staunch Labour voters but over the last few years attitudes have begun to change, particularly during the referendum, when Scottish independence was (falsely) associated with republicanism and Irish reunification.

During the run-up to May’s general election, Scotland’s Catholic bishops wrote a letter urging parishioners to consider the teachings of the Church when casting their vote.

High on their list of priorities for Catholics was the sanctity of life, with the letter stating that “laws which permit abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide are profoundly unjust. We do not want to accept the continued existence in our society of such fundamental violations of human rights and we commit ourselves to work peacefully and tirelessly to oppose and to change them.”

It also listed opposition to Trident as a moral issue, stating that “nuclear weapons represent a grave threat to the human family.”

All parties are aware that the Catholic community is a key voting demographic in Scotland, and it is clear that a huge number of the votes the SNP took from Labour at the last general election were from the Scottish Catholic community.

The Catholic Church in Scotland clearly has influence within the SNP and can potentially lobby the Scottish government to change the law once it has been devolved.

The issue is already being debated in Holyrood.

In a move to pre-empt changes to the current law, Green MSP Patrick Harvie tabled a motion on October 10 stating that the Scottish Parliament “recognises the fundamental importance of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, and commits to defend those rights against any attempt to undermine women’s access to safe and legal abortion in Scotland.”

Last week SNP MSP John Mason lodged a motion which stated that the Scottish Parliament “recognises what it considers the fundamental rights of babies to be protected both before and after birth as well as the importance of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, and commits to achieving a proper balance between these respective rights.”

This issue will intensify over the coming months and those who supported the devolution of abortion law to the Scottish government, for whatever reasons, need to accept responsibility for the outcome of it.

And those on the left who support a woman’s right to choose need to be prepared to mobilise and oppose any proposed changes to the law should they arise.

Zoe Streatfield is Morning Star Scotland reporter.