abortion | Pandaemonium

MEN, WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF ABORTION

May 27, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the gender, politics and abortion rights, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the world’s most expensive drug.) It was published on 26 May 2019, under the headline ‘Men don’t have abortions. That’s no reason not to fight for women’s rights’. The decision by the state of Alabama effectively to ban abortion has refocused attention in America on the issue of reproductive rights. The Alabama law is the most dramatic move in a […]

Categories: Politics, Women • Tags: abortion, abortion bans, alabama, equal rights amendment, equality, usa, women's liberation movement conference, women's rights, women's strike for equality

SILENCED BY THE WORKPLACE

August 6, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This was the main article in my Observer column this week. It was published on 22 July 2018, under the headline ‘Why are employers allowed to police what we say as private citizens?’ Angela Williamson needed an abortion. The trouble was, she lived in Tasmania. Abortion is legal in the state, but the last abortion clinic closed in December. So, this February, Williamson was forced to travel to Melbourne for her operation. Distressed and angry, she dashed off a few tweets to […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: abortion, angela williamson, free speech, privacy, public sphere, twitter

EMBRYO RESEARCH AND HUMAN BEING

July 6, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the International New York Times on the debate about time limits for embryo research. (I cannot publish my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published in the newspaper.) It was originally published under the headline ‘Rethinking Embryo Research Rules’. Few areas of scientific investigation are more controversial than embryo research. Yet, few are more brimming with potential. The field promises valuable insights into early […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: abortion, embryo research, infanticide, peter singer, women's rights

ARBITRARY LINES AND EMBRYO RESEARCH

June 15, 2016 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times, on the debate about time limits for embryo research. It was published under the headline ‘Rethinking Embryo Research Rules’. It is a debate with important consequences not just for embryo research, but also for wider debates over abortion and infanticide. At the heart of all this lies a central question: Where do we draw the line between a blob of cells and a human being with moral status? […]

Categories: Human, Science & Technology • Tags: abortion, embryo research, infanticide

WHY ABORTION SHOULD BE DECRIMINALIZED

April 6, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Last week Donald Trump caused outrage by suggesting that women who had illegal abortions should be punished; so much outrage, in fact, that he was forced to backtrack. This week a Belfast woman was convicted under the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act after she took pills to induce an abortion. Abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland (the province is exempted from the provisions of the 1967 Abortion Act, which applies to the rest of the UK). Northern Irish women […]

Categories: Britain, Women • Tags: 1967 abortion act, abortion, northern ireland, women's rights

UNITED AGAINST ABORTION

February 4, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This week the High Court in Belfast granted a judicial review of Northern Ireland’s abortion law. The 1967 Abortion Act, which legalised abortion in England, Scotland and Wales – or, to be more precise, provided a legal defence for those carrying out the operation in certain circumstances – specifically excluded Northern Ireland from its provisions. Today, abortion is legal in Northern Ireland only if a woman’s life is at risk or if pregnancy would have an adverse effect on her […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Women • Tags: 1967 abortion act, abortion, britain, ireland, northern ireland, religion, women's rights

WHAT DO BELIEVERS BELIEVE? (NOT WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT)

August 11, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Linda Woodhead is professor of sociology of religion at Lancaster University and Director of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society research programme. She is also one of the most acute observers of contemporary religion and religious identity. She has been conducting a series of surveys with YouGov on social and personal morality for the Westminster Faith Debates, of which she is the organiser. Linda is writing an essay for Pandaemonium on the changing character of religious identity, which I will publish that next […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain • Tags: abortion, assisted suicide, atheism, catholicism, christianity, islam, linda woodhead, morality, religion, same sex marriage, secularism

ABORTION, MEHDI HASAN, FREE SPEECH AND THE LEFT

October 15, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Mehdi Hasan, political director of the Huffington Post UK, has an essay in the current issue of the New Statesman, of which he was until recently the political editor, arguing that the progressive stance on abortion is to oppose it. The article inevitably created a storm on Twitter and elsewhere on the web, a storm at which Hasan took umbrage. ‘Time to add abortion to the list of issues – Islam, Iran’s nuclear programme etc – that can’t be discussed […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: abortion, equality, free speech, freedom struggles, mehdi hasan, moral autonomy, women's rights

ABORTION AND CONSCIENCE

August 30, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Religious freedom, I argued in my Notes on Religious Freedom, is not a special kind of liberty but one of a broader set of freedoms of conscience, belief, assembly and action. Whatever one’s beliefs, secular or religious, there should be complete freedom to express them, short of inciting violence or other forms of physical harm to others. Whatever one’s beliefs, secular or religious, there should be freedom to assemble to promote them. And whatever one’s beliefs, secular or religious, there should […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: abortion, atheism, creationism, ethics, peter singer, religious freedom, utilitarianism

ABORTION, INFANTICIDE, HUMANITY, FREE SPEECH

March 7, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Is there no moral distinction between killing a newborn baby and aborting a fetus? And should an academic paper that seemingly advocated the killing of newborns have ever been published? Those are the questions at the heart of a controversy that has erupted after the publication of a paper entitled ‘After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?’ in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Two Australian academics, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, argued that the moral status of a newborn baby was […]

Categories: Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: abortion, atheism, ethics, free speech, humanism, infanticide, peter singer, religion, utilitarianism, women's rights