A regular consumer of mainstream media or a top shelf clicker of Google searches can be forgiven for thinking the UK is a pro-choice nation, with a settled law that most people agree with.
Switch on your TV, and you can watch a Channel 4 documentary of two disabled presenters being won over to our barbaric practice of killing disabled babies with the same drug used to kill criminals on death row. Or type in “abortion views” into Google, and you’ll see a number of international surveys that supply data to back up this desire. One from IPSOS suggests that in 2021, 80% of Britons think abortion should be legal. Another survey commissioned a year earlier by the UK’s second-largest abortion provider suggested, unsurprisingly, that 90% of Britons are pro-choice. The end impression is the same: We’re cool with abortion.
However, as recent years have increasingly taught us, what big media pumps into our homes and what Google algorithms allow to sit alluringly beneath the search box may not, in fact, be the full truth. A recent survey of 874 members of the public across 27 towns and cities, published this week by the Centre of Bioethical Reform UK (for whom I work), tells a remarkably different story.
Firstly, we found that 1 in 4 respondents identified as pro-life. That’s 4 times more than MSI found in 2020! Secondly, we found that just under half of respondents thought our abortion figures (214,000 last year) were too high. Thirdly and perhaps most remarkably of all, we found that significant numbers were willing to offer support to legally reform our abortion law in multiple ways. This was especially true regarding the current practice of killing babies because they have Down’s syndrome or cleft lip and palate – a treatable condition. Our results also showed that 61% of respondents think our abortion law should be lowered by at least two weeks, 71% think abortion should not be conducted in homes, and finally, a staggering 79% of respondents think babies should be sedated before being intentionally killed.
Now, I’d be the first to admit, as the survey does, that these figures are not a scientific representation of the nation as a whole, but that does not mean they are meaningless. What this survey shows is that when members of the public are invited into the details of our abortion law, people’s unequivocal support for abortion begins to wane. As the foreword states: “Abortion is far from a settled issue.” At the very least, our survey should be an impetus for more research, but we hope it will go further than this. If there is provable public will for reform, then reform should follow.
So, do I think these results will grace your screen or top your Google search any time soon? No. But it’s important to know that the streets of England tell a very different story than the screens of England, and that legal changes inconceivable to one generation may be the focal point of the next.
To read the survey results, visit: cbruk.org/abortionviews
Christian Hacking is the Public Engagement Officer for CBR UK
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I am pro-choice. A choice that takes place before sex, not when the consequences of it are faced.