Commons votes to maintain time limit

Vote No1 (13 weeks) 71-393 maj 322
Vote No2 (16 weeks) 84-387 maj 303
Vote No3 (20 weeks) 190-332 maj 142
Vote No4 (provisions relating to information in the event of abnormalities) 173-309 maj 136
Vote No5 (22 weeks) 233-304 maj 71

HFEB Day 2 (Tues)

Today's votes will be on the need for a father and the debate to lower the abortion limit.

From today's Guardian - Do families need fathers?

Duncan Smith claims that, without fathers, boys join gangs and teenage girls become pregnant. But "there's nothing magical about fathers," says Susan Golombok, professor of family research and director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, and co-author of Growing Up in a Lesbian Family. "Fathers who are very involved with their children are good for children. But fathers who are not very involved - they aren't as important, and can even have a negative effect. It's a very simplistic notion to think that fathers are important just because they're male."

From today's Times - Abortion: a worrying tale of leeches by David Aaronavitch.

So this is what all this nonsense about “compromise” boils down to - telling women who are less than 24 weeks pregnant and who don't want to have a baby that, legally, they must go through with the birth. We then leave them the terrible choice of procuring an abortion elsewhere or of bearing a child they do not want.

To me, this is immoral. It is not a conjecture about lives that could be led, but an action that will damage lives that are being led. Tonight conscientious MPs should put on their leech-socks and vote against all these parasitical amendments.

On both issues we get the merest glimpse of the kind of Chamber we would have with a Conservative majority after the next election - not nice to behold.

Meanwhile, Louise has blogged extensively on yesterday's votes including Labour MP's who voted against the Government.

From today's papers

Quite a lot in the papers about the HFEB votes.

Simon Jenkins is excellent and rightly robust in the Times Family planning is one area in which we don't need MP's help

Some quotes:

The Commons will have a chance to stamp the medieval demand of the Catholic Church that MPs obey its edicts rather than their judgments.

Those who regard women as involuntary incubators of God’s souls treat all abortion as murder and therefore seek to ban it by law. I cannot see how this entitles them also to draw fine distinctions as between 24 weeks and 20, 18 or 13. Abortion should be a matter for women, couples, doctors and medical advance to resolve. Each case will be personal and unique. Parliament, having decided to interfere, should at least leave in place a limit validated by experience.

The opposition is like that to Queen Victoria’s use of chloroform in childbirth as “defying God’s labour”.

As for the Commons debate over whether an IVF baby needs a father, words almost fail me. Of course babies are better off with fathers, but whose business is that? We do not enforce abortions on pregnant schoolgirls for lacking a husband, despite the near-certainty of such a child being born into a dysfunctional home. What are we doing about families ruined by rotten fathers? In my experience women seeking IVF, whether gay or not, are self-selected as responsible parents by virtue of being prepared to go through this uncomfortable process.

However, anyone who thinks that parliament will do the job better should look at this week’s whipping list, with its ludicrous distinction between “government” clauses and “conscience” clauses. Every law should be on MPs’ consciences. For the most part MPs should stop meddling in how people choose to plan and protect their families. They have enough trouble with their own.

Very well and succinctly put.

Also in the Observer:

Gordon Brown Why I believe stem cell researchers deserve our backing

Should scientists be given the legal framework they say they need to pursue new cures and treatments through stem cell research or will we turn our back on these potential advances?

Should children who face death or critical illness find new hope in scientific advances that would allow their new brother or sister to be not just a blessing to their family, but also a saviour sibling to them?

And should people be able to approach IVF clinics without fear of discrimination on the grounds of their sexual orientation?

My answer to all those questions is an unequivocal yes.

Mary Warnock Women, not the unborn deserve our protection

For law cannot be based on what is largely a religious belief and, this apart, we know that abortions would continue to be carried out, only more dangerously, by dodgy doctors or unqualified backstreet abortionists. For those too young to remember, trust me, this is never to be wished for.

The truth, as it always has been, is that we should turn our attention instead to their mothers and consider why they are seeking to abort their babies at so late a stage of pregnancy.

We ought to pay less attention to the destruction of life by abortion than to the quality of life of those who are allowed to live. Life, after all, is not an abstract shared by everyone who is alive - there is no human life that is not lived by somebody. And it is these living people to whom we should attach value and whom we should, if necessary, protect.

Women still need safe, legal abortions

Early next week sees the controversial votes on the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill.

The Bill itself has had extensive scrutiny already (considered by a Joint Committee) and already passed throught the Lords.

On top of the 3 so-called controversial areas (need for a father, hybrid embryos and 'savious siblings') there will the tabling of motions to reduce the time limit on abortion.

Personally I support 'abortion rights' for women i.e. access to safe and legal abortions where a woman decides she needs it. This is not the same as saying that aboriton is right or wrong only that it the individual woman's own choices over her own body and reproductive rights rather than society defining it.

In that sense our abortion laws are imperfect. They lay out all sorts of conditions to be met for the abortion to be lawful. I would allow only one condition, that a woman decides after all options are explained to have an abortion and there is no compulsion or coercion (i.e. it's a free and informed decision - the usual standard for important medical procedures.)

Whilst I have no problem whatever for different groups believing different things (abortion is wrong under all or some circumstances/after a certain time limit) I tend to take a more rigorous position about where the law should be.

The right of a woman to choose is the woman's and hers alone in this matter.

Link to Abortion Rights

It is not too late to contact your MP ahead of these votes. The best way is through writetothem.com.

I do not object to the decision to grant free votes in the Bill (it's a bit misleading as no-one would be forced against their will to vote and so in that sense the votes are always free) but I think it's odd to allow a 'free' vote on the 'need for a father' when it's Governement policy to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and to support same sex parenting.

Children born to lesbian parents are of course going to meet boys and men in their immediate family, school, community and wider society and in any case it is far more important for children to have good, loving and balanced role models of either gender than having strong role models but bad ones.

For more extensive coverage see Lou's Blog

.