I appreciate the strength of feeling on this issue, but the Bill was based on the false premise that women who seek ordinary abortions are living under the constant shadow of arrest.  That is clearly not the case.  Rather, abortion is widely available under the Abortion Act, with just two convictions in the past two years, both in extreme and disturbing scenarios.  One involved a man who had attacked a pregnant woman and caused her to miscarry. That prosecution is an example of the current law seeking to stand up for a woman and punish someone who has committed a terrible crime against her and her unborn child.

The 10 Minute Rule Bill also implied the possibility of the growing availability of abortion pills as a reason to seek to liberalise the law, but if availability is increasing, that should motivate greater concern for women's safety and health, and make us more wary of further liberalisation of the law. Abortion is still a major and often risky procedure for the woman involved, and if abortion pills can be so easily bought, that should lead us to take steps to protect young and vulnerable women.

The campaign behind the Bill claims "We Trust Women", but polling in 2014 showed that 92% of women believed that a pregnant woman should always be seen in person by a qualified doctor. Far from trusting women, the campaign seeks to change a central aspect of abortion provision in the United Kingdom, in direct opposition to the vast majority of British women's views. Proponents of the Bill claim to be pro-choice, but, to the contrary, they seem to be firmly against helping women to make informed choices.

The Bill is a response to a non-existent threat. It would exacerbate the dangers posed by increased availability of abortion pills and it would remove some of the few protections and regulations in abortion law, fuelling unethical and unsafe practices in many UK abortion clinics and leaving women less safe and less informed, and for these reasons I voted against the Bill.