Telegraph columnist: ‘No bad reason for abortion’

A columnist for a national newspaper has said there is ‘no bad reason’ for aborting unborn children.

Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Rebecca Reid said that it would be “perfectly valid” for a mother to have an abortion to preserve her “beach body” and that women should not be required to give a reason to medical professionals.

She claimed: “If you do not want to be pregnant, you do not have to be pregnant, and you can choose not to be.”

Record levels

Reid was responding to reports that a woman was able to get DIY abortion pills in the post from BPAS after saying she “didn’t want to look pregnant on holiday”. She was not actually pregnant.

England and Wales recorded 207,384 abortions for residents last year, the highest ever number.

Government statistics show the total number of abortions, including non-residents, was even higher, with 209,519 taking place in 2019, an increase of 3.4 per cent from the previous year.

The figures released by the Department of Health and Social Care also reveal that there were over 600 abortions of unborn children diagnosed with Down’s syndrome and 17 where the baby had cleft lip or cleft palate.

Abortion on demand

In July, pro-abortion MPs attempted to make abortion available for any reason by hijacking the Government’s Domestic Abuse Bill, but failed.

Labour MP Diana Johnson’s amendment to introduce abortion on demand would have removed the existing requirement for the consent of two doctors.

An attempt to legalise home abortions where there are allegations of domestic abuse also failed, after widespread opposition forced Johnson to withdraw the amendment.

‘Broken beyond repair’

But in 2015, Westminster rejected the opportunity to make sex-selective abortion explicitly illegal in UK law, as MPs voted against an amendment tabled by Fiona Bruce.

MPs voted against the proposal by 292 to 201.

Commenting on the vote, Fiona Bruce said: “This vote showed what we all know but nobody wants to admit. The Abortion Act, which was drafted to permit abortion in serious circumstances, is broken beyond repair.”