July 14, 2016
Why Theresa May is no Feminist
I must admit, while not a conservative voter, last week I started to get a bit sucked in!
Last week, there was Theresa May, Britain’s would-be next (and now new) Prime Minister wearing purple.
While I’m yet to notice Hillary in the color of feminism (and dignity), I convinced myself that May’s choice of frock color was no accident.
And then there was that photo of her in the black tshirt, with white writing stating ‘This is what a feminist looks like’.
Good on her I thought!
I’ve always liked the sentiment as I thought smugly to myself, there’s the proof.
But one look at May’s voting pattern on the fundamentals of bodily determination – read the fundamental human rights of abortion and euthanasia – and she is as anti-choice and as anti-feminist as the next ‘pro-lifer’.
For instance, in regard to Britain’s last right to die bill known as the Marris Assisted Dying Bill No 2, May was one of the 74% of MPs to vote against the bill.
Point is she didn’t have to nail her colors to the post quite so blatantly, she choose to do so.
Especially not when David Cameron, Tim Farron of the Lib Dems, Angus Robertson (SNP at Westminster) and Jeremy Corbyn (one day before he became Labour leader) did not vote at all.
Only Ed Miliband (then Labour Leader) supported the bill, and presumably a person’s right to choose when and how they die.
And then there is May’s infamous 2008 parliamentary vote on a bill that sought to decrease the period when a woman could access an abortion from 24 weeks to 20 weeks. This occurred in the face of medical/ scientific opinion to the contrary.
Clearly, if we are talking about the weeks of gestation we are not talking about women’s rights. Already the discourse is that of the pro-life, anti-choice anti-woman polemicists who seem to think that the woman carrying a foetus is nothing more than a vessel with no voice and no say over what happens to her body, to her self.
I wish I could be optimistic about Mrs May. But I’m not.
The fact that the UK has voted on 12 separate assisted dying bills over a space of 11 years and that the most recent attempt in September 2015 was defeated so soundly (74% against), begs the question of whether Westminster will ever grow up enough to pass civilized laws when it comes to the end of life.
With Theresa May in charge one thing is for sure. This won’t be any time soon.
Fiona Stewart, PhD LLB
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