Beyond the Tram Lines: Disability Discrimination, Reproductive Rights and Anachronistic Abortion Law

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point the recent case of Crowter, which challenged the law permitting provision of abortion on the grounds of fetal anomaly. It begins by briefly locating the case within a longer ‘biography’ of the Abortion Act 1967, casting important light on the issue raised within it. It then focuses in detail on the claims made in Crowter, exploring how important moral, social and political concerns with disability discrimination were refracted through an anti-abortion lens as they were translated into legal argument. As a result, the legal remedies sought were simultaneously disproportionate and insufficient to address the harms described. Whilst agreeing that the Abortion Act reflects anachronistic and discriminatory understandings of disability and is overdue reform, the article argues that a response that fully reflects modern ethical values will require more radical change than envisaged in Crowter, and that this must refuse an opposition between the rights of pregnant and disabled people.