Weekend Woman's Hour: The law on abortion, Aparna Sen, Being lesbian in the military

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.2 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

The overturning by the US Supreme Court of the landmark Roe v Wade ruling has prompted many of you to get in touch to share your reactions and experiences. But what does the law in the UK say about a woman’s right to an abortion? We hear from Professor Fiona De Londras, the Chair of Global Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School. Aparna Sen is one of India's best loved and most successful film directors. Her career has spanned 40 years and she's explored issues around mental health, sexual abuse and infidelity. Aparna is in England for the London Indian Film Festival. Have you ever noticed the queue for the women’s toilets is much longer than the queue for the men’s? Two Bristol university graduates have tried to resolve this issue, by inventing female urinals. They joined Emma to explain how it works. How do you heal and get through a break up? Annie Lord is Vogue’s dating columnist. She joins Emma Barnett to talk about her debut book, Notes on Heartbreak. A candid exploration of the best and worst of love, she talks about nursing a broken heart and her own attempts to move on in the current dating climate; from disastrous rebound sex to sending ill-advised nudes, stalking your ex’s new girlfriend and the sharp indignity of being ghosted. Welsh singer and dancer Marged Siôn is with us. She's in the band, Self Esteem and appears in a new Welsh-language short film called Hunan Hyder which means self-confidence). She talks to us about trauma, healing and appearing on stage with Adele! Dame Kelly Holmes came out as a lesbian last week. The Olympic champion served in the army in the late 1980s, when you could face prison for being gay as a member of the military. Dame Kelly spoke of her worry that she would still face consequences if she were to let her sexuality be known. It wasn’t until 2000 that a ban on being gay and serving in the Army, Navy or RAF was lifted. Emma Riley was discharged from the Royal Navy in 1993 for being a lesbian. An American pregnant woman who was on holiday in Malta this month couldn't get an induced medical miscarriage when she needed it because of the country's strict abortion laws. Andrea Prudente ended up going to Mallorca to get treatment, where she’s recovering in a hotel.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Fibisi Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts
0:05.4	Hello I'm Jessica Crichton, welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast.
0:09.2	So coming up we'll hear from Aparna Sen, one of the best loved and most successful female
0:13.3	directors in Indian cinema.
0:15.2	Plus, are you sick and tired of the long cues in female public bathrooms?
0:19.8	Well, two university graduates may have found a groundbreaking solution.
0:24.8	But first, the landmark decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs Wade, which is the
0:30.1	constitutional right to abortion nationwide, had led to debates on reproductive rights around
0:35.4	the world.
0:36.6	But how much do you know about what the law says on abortion here in the UK, and is there
0:40.6	any chance that the law might change?
0:43.0	Well earlier this week Emma spoke to Professor Fionette De Londras, who is the chair of Global
0:47.6	Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School, to drill down on some of the facts.
0:52.4	So under the abortion act of 1967, which is what applies through most of the UK, there
0:58.9	is no right to abortion.
1:01.3	Instead abortion is a crime.
1:03.8	And what the act does is it outlines the situations in which somebody may avail of abortion and
1:10.6	provide abortion without committing a criminal offense.
1:14.8	In Northern Ireland it's a little bit different.
1:16.6	Abortion has been decriminalized in recent years, but in fact there is almost no access to
1:24.2	abortion in Northern Ireland because the services have not been commissioned.
1:28.2	And that's something that is ongoing at present.
	...

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