Remember, remember, the 5th of November, when United States citizens go to the polls, and the world holds its breath.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s stands against former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump. Despite all the geopolitical, economic and environmental instability over this past year, the hot-button issue in the 2024 Presidential election remains sexual and reproductive health (SRH) - specifically abortion rights.
In 2022, the Dobbs Amendment ruling passed by the US Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade, a law which had made access to abortion a federal requirement for nearly 50 years. As a result, abortion was re-criminalised across the United States, with an estimated 13 million women and pregnant people losing access to pregnancy terminations, including those for medical necessity. Early research has shown that the overturning of Roe versus Wade has had a knock-on effect, where access to a spectrum of SRH-related services has also been affected.
The US Presidential Election has overwhelming relevance to global politics. It is no secret that America’s influence looms large in the UK. We can see America’s cultural shadow on a more micro-level too: UK "Pro-Life" pressure groups have more than doubled their spending since the Dobbs amendment, adopting tactics and rhetoric most often associated with their American counterparts.
More recently, in Scotland, the US-born anti-abortion group 40 Days for Life threatened to sue the Government over the passing of the Safe Access Zone law, which prevented protesting within 200 metres of clinics or hospitals practicing sexual and reproductive healthcare. It is clear that anti-abortion sentiments have been emboldened, and directly supported, by the US example.
Despite the heightened visibility of anti-abortion sentiments in Scotland, the Scottish Government has taken progressive steps to protect reproductive rights. In 2021, the Women’s Health Plan was released, the first of its kind in Britain, which committed to increasing access to family planning and investing greater research into menopause and endometriosis.
Admirable as these sentiments were, three years on we have seen little change in the provision of SRH in Scotland. Women continue to face significant challenges of access to contraception and abortion due to chronic underfunding of specialist services. This is reflected across the UK, where 37% of people do not have local access to reproductive healthcare, further impacting their reproductive autonomy.
The Abortion Act of 1967 remains one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe and does not enshrine the right to abortion in law. In Scotland, further restrictions on the upper limit of when an abortion can be procured means that those who are pregnant regularly have to travel to England to access late-stage terminations which fall within the legal time limit.
The Women’s Health Plan comes to an end soon, and the new Programme for Government makes no reference to updating this, amending present laws on abortion access, nor providing more investment in SRH services. With the US presidential election becoming a de facto referendum on abortion, it is time that reproductive health was put back on Scotland’s political agenda.
Dr Kristin Hay is a lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. She is a historian of gender and medicine, with a focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights activism.
Agenda is a column for outside contributors. Contact: agenda@theherald.co.uk
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here