Mandela And Abortion

The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1996, which was not imposed by Presidential fiat but enacted through a parliamentary system and could be amended or repealed in like manner, provides for abortion on demand up to the twentieth week, provides for abortion up to birth for "serious medical reasons", and, as amended in 2004, allows registered nurses and midwives to perform abortions before the twelfth week.

That, for all its faults, is a less liberal law than the one imposed by judicial fiat on the United States by the appointees of Republican Presidents, especially Ronald Reagan, and it is a less liberal law than that enacted as a Government Bill by Margaret Thatcher.

Indeed, the particularly striking second of the above three provisions is perhaps exactly the same as Thatcher's principal change: the legalisation of abortion up to birth for a disability which does not need to be specified. I do not know whether the "serious medical reason" has to be specified in South Africa.

Certainly if it does, and at least arguably if it does not, then the law there is not as bad as the one bequeathed to us by Thatcher, which is effectively abortion on demand up to birth. That is also the explicit law of the United States as decreed by the appointees of the Republicans in general and of Reagan in particular.