The Jersey Government is consulting on radical proposals to liberalise abortion law on the Island.
Options being considered include allowing abortion up to birth for any reason, sex-selective abortions and the introduction of censorship zones around abortion centres.
Legislation in the self-governing Crown Dependency currently protects the unborn from abortion beyond twelve weeks gestation, except in limited circumstances.
DIY abortion
Minister for Health Karen Wilson has claimed it was “really quite clear” the Island’s Termination of Pregnancy (Jersey) Law 1997 needed changing.
Among other things, the consultation asks: “Should termination in Jersey be legal at any gestational limit, regardless of the grounds for termination?”
Possible grounds for abortion proposed by the consultation include “for economic or social reasons” and to reduce the number of babies in the womb to “improve the outcomes” for some of the others.
The consultation also suggests the introduction of a DIY abortion scheme on the Island, where women may request abortion pills – over the phone or by video-link – up to the end of the ninth week of pregnancy.
Euthanasia
In November 2021 Jersey’s States Assembly became the first Parliament in the British Isles to agree in principle that assisted suicide and euthanasia should be permitted.
Under the proposals, Jersey residents aged 18 or over would be able to request to be killed in cases of physical terminal conditions, or “an incurable physical condition, that is giving rise to unbearable suffering that cannot be alleviated in a manner that the person deems tolerable”.
Adults with a terminal physical condition would have to be “reasonably expected to die within six months”, or twelve months if it was a “neurodegenerative” disease. Death could not be requested on the basis of mental conditions alone.
If legislation is passed by the States Assembly, assisted suicide and euthanasia could be available in Jersey before the end of 2027.
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