Dr Therese Coffey, Britain’s new health secretary, known for a love of karaoke and the occasional cigar. She’s a big Liverpool fan, getting caught in what she described as ‘a mosh pit’ at this year’s Champions League final in Paris. She has a PhD in chemistry and is even the kind of person who sets Dr Dre’s Still Dre as an 8 o’clock phone alarm – as LBC’s Nick Ferrari found out live on air this morning.
But we’re more than a little alarmed that the woman now in charge of the NHS has views on abortion that can, at best, be described as ‘nuanced’.
A devout Roman Catholic who voted against gay marriage, the woman also chosen as Britain’s new deputy PM has been quizzed on abortion before.
Asked about the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs Wade, ending the federal right to abortion, she told Sky News: ‘I don’t wear my religion on my sleeve but it’s undoubtedly a part of who I am . . . I would prefer that people didn’t have abortions, but I’m not going to condemn people who do.’
But she added: ‘Abortion law isn't going to change in this country.’
What has been the reaction to Therese Coffey's appointment?
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service has called the new health secretary’s record on abortion rights ‘deeply concerning’.
As a backbencher in 2010, Coffey also introduced a motion in Parliament which called for ‘mental health assessments’ for women seeking an abortion.
Coffey also defended former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt after he said he believed the abortion limit should be reduced to 12 weeks, tweeting that the ‘majority of European countries have [a] 12 week limit #abortion’.
She voted against extending abortion rights to women in Northern Ireland, albeit saying at the time this was because she supported devolution and did not believe the UK Parliament should be ‘exercising direct rule on this issue’.
What’s more, she voted against making at-home abortion pills, introduced during the pandemic when GP surgeries were closed, permanently available in England and Wales.
It comes amid a worrying backdrop of Tory lawmakers taking aim at Britain’s abortion rights, following the seismic repeal of Roe vs Wade in the US.
What have other Conservative ministers said about abortion rights in the UK?
Nadine Dories, the outgoing culture secretary and a former nurse, told Times Radio earlier this yearthat the 24-week rule — the cut-off point for when the majority of women can have an abortion — was ‘too high’.
After the rollback of Roe vs Wade in America, Danny Kruger, a Tory colleague, suggested that women did not have ‘an absolute right to bodily autonomy’ when it came to abortion. (He later said his comments had been ‘misunderstood’, adding ‘I do not wish to dictate what a woman should do with her own body, as has been claimed.’)
Backtracks and clarifications are all well and good. An MP must be judged on their record. But when it comes to abortion rights, if you weren’t already, you should be paying very close attention to what is happening in this country’s corridors of power.