PM and top ministers voted against widening abortion access, records show

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world

Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

The prime minister and senior members of his government have voted against boosting access to abortions or have opted out of key votes on terminations, records show.

Anneliese Dodds, shadow secretary of state for women and equalities, raised concerns about the voting records of top ministers as she warned women around the UK will be “really worried”.

Ms Dodds noted Rishi Sunak, the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary, James Cleverly, and home secretary, Suella Braverman have abstained or voted against all English abortion legislation since 2015.

This includes moves to roll out “buffer zones” around abortion clinics to protect women seeking terminations from being harassed by protesters, at-home early medical abortions and decriminalising terminations.

More than a third of the government’s current cabinet voted against early medical abortion at-home measures rolled out in the wake of the pandemic being made permanent.

After Covid hit the UK in March 2020, ministers allowed abortion pills to be sent via post to be taken at home after a phone consultation, with the UK’s largest study into abortions finding at-home early medical abortions pose no greater risk and allow women to have the procedure much earlier on in their pregnancy.

Ms Dodds, Labour MP for Oxford East, said: “Women across the country will be really worried about the voting records of senior members of this government and what that means for their right to access safe and legal abortion.

“Women’s abortion rights are being stripped away in other parts of the world. Rishi Sunak needs to be very clear that these rights are not under threat from his government in this country.

“Labour was proud to vote for abortion buffer zones earlier this year. We will always support women and their right to choose.“

Over a quarter of the current cabinet voted against implementing nationwide “buffer zones” outside abortion clinics in England and Wales but the vote still passed last month, with MPs voting 297 to 110 in support of the measure.

A “buffer zone” stops anti-abortion protesters or any other types of demonstrators from standing outside the clinic or hospital or in the near vicinity - with research finding more than 100,000 women attended clinics targeted by anti-abortion demonstrations in 2019.

Chief cabinet members, such as the environment secretary, Therese Coffey, welsh secretary, David Davies, and culture secretary, Michelle Donelan, have routinely voted against abortion access in England.

In the past seven years, the cabinet has cast just four votes to expand abortion access in England, Ms Dodds noted.

She warned the appointment of Maria Caulfield as Minster for Women poses an “extremely concerning” threat to women’s rights. Last week, it emerged Ms Caulfield, who voted to curtail access to abortion, has been granted ministerial responsibility for abortion care in the UK, provoking fury among service providers.

Ms Caulfield is a former officer of the all-party parliamentary pro-life group and voted against legalising abortion in Northern Ireland.

Abortion was banned in almost all circumstances, even in pregnancies resulting from rape and incest, with women who sought terminations facing life imprisonment until the procedure was legalised in Northern Ireland in October 2019.

Clare Murphy, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), a leading abortion provider in the UK, said it was “quite simply appalling that Maria Caulfield, a self-declared ‘voice of the unborn’”, had been “given the government portfolio for abortion care”.

She said: “Unlike any other area of healthcare, decisions regarding the licensing of abortion clinics sit with the relevant government minister. Maria Caulfield potentially now has the ability to block the establishment of new abortion services, and close existing clinics.”

Ms Caulfield, the Conservative MP for Lewes, has previously suggested curbing the 24-week abortion time limit. She has also been criticised for claiming that babies born at a 18 weeks “grow up to live long, healthy lives like the rest of us” – an assertion that was rejected as “simply untrue”.

Mr Sunak has abstained on all votes about abortions since he became an MP in 2015 - opting out of the recent votes on “buffer zones” and at-home early medical abortion - apart from voting in support of giving the Northern Ireland secretary fresh powers to commission termination services there.