A Chronicle reporter has questioned politicians and academics on US abortion law changes and the effect they may have in the UK.
Flaminia Luck asked a panel on the BBC's Any Questions how we make sure America's Supreme Court's decision to effectively end the constitutional right to an abortion for millions of US women doesn't bolster dated opinions on women's reproductive rights in Britain.
Last month, the court overturned the Roe V Wade case and individual states are now able to ban abortions again. Half of the states in the US are expected to introduce new restrictions or bans.
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Appearing on the BBC Radio 4 programme at the Washington Academy, in Washington, Sunderland, Flaminia questioned a panel made up of Richard Holden, Conservative MP for North West Durham, Alison McGovern, Labour MP for Wirral South, journalist Seb Payne, and Northumbria University's Prof Katy Shaw.
She asked: " Washington, where we are tonight, has a very famous connection to the US. Last week, across the pond, we saw Roe V Wade overturned by the Supreme Court and, on Tuesday, Conservative MP Danny Kruger told the House of Commons he doesn't think women have an absolute right to bodily autonomy. So, my question for the panel is, how do you ensure that these dated opinions towards women's reproductive rights aren't bolstered here in the UK by the Supreme Court's decision in the US?"
First to answer was Prof Shaw, who said: "I think we have got to start off by just extending mass sympathy to women in America at the moment. It's a very sad day that we have got to this point. But the fear, as you intimate, is where America goes, other places might follow.
"I really believe today it's such a difficult time to be a woman for lots of reasons and, certainly when I talk to my students and my 10-year-old goddaughter about this, I would love to be able to tell them that the world they're going to inherit is a better one for all the developments we have seen over the last 50 years.
"This is bad for men and women. Abortion is not just for women, it's for men too, it's for health, it's for society. I worry that, over here, we're probably not talking about it in the way we should. We're in a situation where women who are trying to exercise control over their bodies are shouted at outside clinics up and down the country and many charitable services that run abortion clinics are suffering when it comes to funding.
"And, in areas like Northern Ireland, we're still seeing women having to fly over to places like Leeds to get medical abortions. They're then sent home bleeding on a plane, bleeding on a train, until lockdown when these drugs rules changed. We would not put animals through what we put women through in this country and, I think, to paraphrase a stand-up comic, if men could get pregnant, you would get abortions in Burger King.
"We really need to think about equality as starting in the womb, not ending there."
Alison McGovern said we need to make sure more women get into politics to stop outdated views on women's reproductive rights, while Seb Payne said we need to make sure we make a separation between the US Supreme Court and what happens in the UK.
Richard Holden said: "Abortion is a topic reasonable people can discuss. Some people believe life begins at conception, some believe it's at birth. I think most of us believe that, some time in between that, we have to have a reasonable time limit for abortions and when they can happen and that's the situation I would like to see remain in the UK.
"We can have a reasonable debate in that space where we don't remove rights from women that have been hard fought for for many decades."
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