Criminal Justice Bill

Written evidence submitted by Dr Andrew Kirk to the Criminal Justice Bill (CJB52)

Dear Committee,

It is unfortunate, and somewhat deceitful, that two backbenchers have grasped an unlikely opportunity to add two amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill on a subject wholly unrelated to the case they want to advance. 

Their concern is to pass a motion through both Houses of Parliament that would effectively decriminalise abortion altogether. In asking that these two amendments should be rigorously opposed, I want to make two observations:

1. The present law on abortion restricts abortion to 24 weeks of gestation. If there is going to be any change in thae law, it should be to lower the age limit to at least 22 weeks, seeing that an increasing number of babies survive death at that age, due to the advanced medical care that they receive. The British law on abortion is far more lenient in this regard than most continental European nations who limit abortion to some 10-12 weeks. The reason for the lower limit is probably due to recent scientific imaging of the development of a foetus that confirms its resemblance to a human being in miniature. 

2. The other factor is that the pre-born baby is human and a person long before its existence outside the womb. Those who advocate the legitimacy of abortion at any stage of gestation seek to drive a wedge between being human and being a human person. This distinction cannot be made, simply because the foetus does not suddenly become a person when it cries for the first time at birth. Personality cannot be assigned to it from one moment to the next when it is born. This factor is recognised in international law. The Declaration of the Rights of a Child, adopted by the UN's General Assembly in November 1959, states that 'the child, by reason of its physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including proper legal protection, before as well as after birth (emphasis added). This paragraph was included, word for word, in the Preamble to The Convention on the Rights of the Child, also  adopted by the General Assembly of the UN, thirty years later (November 1989). The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966), states the following: 'sentence of death...shall not be carried out on pregnant women' (emphasis added). One assumes that the UK signed up to these Conventions and Covenants. No argument was made against any of these proposals to the effect that the unborn child does not possess human rights as such, and no argument was made to the effect that there is a human right to abortion.

It seems obvious that the two MPs who wish to push through an amendment that leaves a decision about abortion entirely in the hands of the pregnant woman at any stage of gestation removes one right (that of the child) without affirming another right (that of abortion at any point in the pregnancy), because the latter does not exist.

Moreover, the timing of the amendment is highly problematical, since it does not afford sufficient time to consider the overturning of the present abortion law. It is a devious way of trying to smuggle in a highly controversial proposition into a Bill that has nothing to do with its subject matter.

January 2024.