The Permissive Society legislation was barely noticed at the time. You have to scour the specialist Catholic press for much mention of it. Scarcely a soul voted against it. But then, nowhere near half of the House of Commons turned up to vote in favour of it, either. At the time, it was a sideshow.
Until the 1980s, the reputation of Roy Jenkins rested on his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then Margaret Thatcher chose to make it about measures most of which she had supported, and none of which she ever attempted to repeal. In the case of abortion, quite the reverse. In 1990, she legalised it up to birth.
But in the debate on Second Reading of what was to become the 1967 Abortion Act, even Leo Abse expressed the hope that abortion would never come to be seen as just another operation, "like having a tooth pulled." Yet look at us now. And yet, look at us now. Look even at the BBC.
So no, abortion is not, and it never will be, a routine medical procedure. That fact is entirely unconnected to how much of it there might be at any given time. There is just something about it. And there always will be.
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