Conclusion

This chapter places abortion debates in Britain in the context of both anti-abortion strategy worldwide and the global struggle for reproductive justice, touching on issues of race, ethnicity, migration and nation. There has recently been a twofold shift in the terrain of British pro-choice argument. One the one hand, the British pro-choice coalition has shifted from a politics of protection – which emphasises women’s vulnerability and thereby supports a paternalistic, medicalised regime of abortion regulation – to a politics of liberation, which emphasises women’s authority over their own reproductive decisions. On the other hand, there is a growing need to acknowledge intersectional or reproductive justice claims in abortion politics. The chapter closes by asking whether the pro-choice movement is being pulled in two different directions, and how it can steer between them.