TUESDAY 1pm: A petition signed by over 200,000 people was presented to anti-Corrie MPS including Jo Richardson, Ian Mikardo, Willie Hamilton and Donagh Macdonald. The petition forms were carefully packed into boxes that drinking a bottle of gin in a hot bath was supposed to provoke miscarriage. Many women must have tried it before the '67 The petition was presented by a number of female writers, including Anna By the time that the 10,000-strong NUS-organised demonstration reached Westminster the numbers who had turned out for the mass lobby had reached at least 20,000. Mny queued up to see their local MI's to express their views in perThe massive support for the lobby, organised by the Campaigo Against the Corrie Bill, showed the huge shift in public feeling on abortion, reflected in The area around Westminster was milling with people; it looked like some expression of popular power. If someone had said the area had been taken over you'd believe it. The anti-abortionists have never been able to mobilise such mass support for their lobbies, and Parliamentary lobbying is one activity they unlike Tory themselves their words. become law.
Bill. carried it in. men This continued favour only PARLIAMENTARY | debate is a spectacle quite anything else. hard to believe that this col lection of grotesques and fools (particularty on the benches) can take seriously, let alone expect us to respect Friday the whole thing would have been funny if the subject under discussion had not been abortion, with the threat that Corrie's anti-abortion Bill might The debate on Corrie's Bill began with the presentation to House 200,000 signature petition Oonagh MacDonaid escorted by two in black breeches and stockings striking just the right note of antiquated ceremony.
gothic note was throughout the morning's proceedings, espe cially whenever Bernard Braine more got up to speak - which he did with amazing regularity. Braine the Bill (Corrie himself got up to make contribution all morning. fairly irrelevant Bernard Braine is caricature of the bigoted Tory-he even looks like something out of Dickensand he held forth at length on questions of morality and murder. 'It's the pregnant woman who wants an abortion or the innocent child,' he said. Or, more revealingly: "Medical opinion that approved of the '67 Act was of the lowest ethical and moral standards. I want to take a higher view.' Green form Braine claimed that the '67 Act was continuously broken to allow abortion on demand, and held up a green form which, he claimed, authorised an tion on the signature of only one doctor tane reason given as 'unwanted pregnancy' 'This is disgraceful, illegal and happens every day of the week.
'A law that is broken every day of the year cannot be good law', he concluded. One could only agree, but not when he argued that this was a reason for introducing a law that even women would feel compelled to break.
The only debate with any intrinsic interest in the whole was that on amendment introduced by Jo Richardson. Her amendment the allowed for one doctor authorise menstrual extraction ~ to the sixth week pregnancy with full immunity -in other words abortion on request for the first six weeks. Her amendment also suggested that as as there was medical supervision it did not necessarily have be performed by a doctor.
This amendment raised the wrath of Jill Knight formidable and pedantic Tory matron. Her speech explained that doctors cannot determine whether a woman is pregnant at S1X weeks; that menstrual extraction is a very serious, very painful and quite dangerous operation; and that painful performed on a woman who is not in fact pregnant!
She produced no evidence for her assertions, which were rapidly refuted by the large number of members of the medical profession who seem to have made it into the House of Commons. Morality Her concluding remarks were that the provision menstrual extraction be a 'gross waste of public money, which brought jeers AGAINST FRIDAY 2.15pm: A large assembly of women gathered in Central Hall, waiting to hear a report of what happened in and eager to discuss the next steps for the the feminist folk singer, entertained Eke 'The right to choose' and '1 want auline Roe from the National Union of student women had built the campaign and what the effects of the Bill would be for to| from other MPs and fron gallery. of However on the po side, the debate on day raised some of the really ce questions about abortion shitted the discussion. from 'morality'.
Dr Roger Thomas, fron Labour benches, talked a the problems with the pill had led thousands of wom Just you wait, Mr You'll be sorry, bi late We won't tolerate You'll see how str Ha ha ha Mr ( Ho ho ho Mr ( Just you wait give it up over the last yea said that the question of pregnancy was one that w look at seriously future.
Gwyneth Dunwoody p out that the real issues tha of should be addressing are so few •abo performed on the NHS? said the amendment designed to force the Hor Eileen Fairweather would happen if Corri more conventional e backed up by 'self-hel wait for the Act to be never become law.
Outside the hall of stalls with lite organisations and tea and coffee white