Bid to delay abortion law fails

The vote on Deputy Carl Meerveld’s sursis to delay was 28 against and 11 in favour.

Today the States is expected to ratify the new legislation, which includes a raft of changes, such as increasing the gestation abortion limit from 12 to 24 weeks and abolishing the offence of a woman self-aborting her foetus.

In the morning States members entered the Chamber to chants from both sides of campaigners.

Deputy Tina Bury, the vice president of Health & Social Care opened up the debate saying that the current law was outdated and out of step with the rest of the British Isles.

She said the proposed changes were the result of months and months of research and consultation, and she read out a long list of professions and groups that had been involved in extensive dialogue.

A delay, she said, to allow for further consultation would reach the same conclusion that was before them.

‘It’s a subject that needs to be discussed with empathy, compassion, and thinking before we speak, and with the utmost levels of respect.

‘The baseline of respect that we need to start from is recognising that no woman takes a decision to end a pregnancy lightly, as our medical professionals would attest to, and its a decision that stays with them for the rest of their

life.’

In putting forward his motion for a delay to the legislation, Deputy Carl Meerveld said

he was doing it with great reluctance because he

was pro-choice.

However he felt that de-criminalising self-abortion was unacceptable on moral, ethical and legal grounds, and

that it was a matter of life and death.

‘Decriminalising self-abortion for the entire gestation period from inception until birth, zero to 40 weeks, means that a mother can deliberately abort a healthy, survivable child right up to and during the contractions just before birth.

‘The survivable unborn child has no protection under the new law.’