Take lead on abortion rights

A FEW weeks ago in Edinburgh’s Lothian Road a varied group of people celebrated the 50th anniversary of some limited progress for women’s rights – the 1967 Abortion Act, a Westminster law that partially decriminalises women who choose how to control their own fertility. Sadly, there was also a crowd on other side of the road who wanted to threaten women with even stricter limits.

It is an important step forward that abortion law has been devolved from Westminster to Holyrood but only if we all campaign successfully to improve it. As long as grubby deals can be done with the DUP, one of the leading anti-choice forces in Ireland where it means women must travel to Britain for abortion, we cannot be satisfied by doing nothing. Scotland still has a long way to go when women here who are late but still within legal time limits must also travel across the Border to private, not NHS, clinics for treatment.

However, to make it a significant step forward in Scotland we need to complete the process of decriminalising women that was started 50 years ago. It is no good having a powerful, different Scottish Government if it thinks it only needs to adopt limited laws from London rather than campaign for Scotland to take the lead in bringing an end to the second-class status of women.

Norman Lockhart,

Plora,

Waverley Road, Innerleithen.

MUCH was made of the deal between the Democratic Unionist Party and the Conservative Party with it being described as “grubby” in many quarters. What could be grubbier than a deal to ship women over from Northern Ireland to terminate their unwanted pre-born babies free of charge in an English abortion centre either by having them poisoned or surgically removed (“Climbdown on abortion heads off Tory rebellion”, The Herald, June 30)? Shame on those MPs who clubbed together to get this “deal”.

B McKenna,

Overtoun Avenue, Dumbarton.