New UK law makes sex-selective abortion easier than ever



On March 18, abortion law in the United Kingdom underwent a profound — and, to some, deeply troubling — change. At the center of the controversy is Clause 208 of the Crime and Policing Bill.

Introduced by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, the clause passed in the House of Commons on June 17, 2025 and was supported by the House of Lords on March 18 of this year.

India — the largest country of origin for migrants to the United Kingdom — accounts for roughly half of the world’s 'missing females' at birth.

While presented as a compassionate update to Victorian-era laws, the clause effectively creates a legal disparity that anyone concerned with the sanctity of life may find objectionable.

Exempting women

To understand the scale of the change, American readers need context. The Abortion Act of 1967 did not legalize abortion outright. Instead, it established exemptions. Termination was permitted only if two doctors agreed that the pregnancy posed a risk to the physical or mental health of the mother or her existing children. Outside those conditions, abortion remained a criminal offense under the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861. Today, the general legal limit for abortion in the U.K. is 24 weeks.

Clause 208 fundamentally alters that framework. It removes women entirely from the scope of the 1861 Act. In practical terms, a woman can no longer be prosecuted for ending her own pregnancy at any stage — including up to birth. Medical professionals, however, remain bound by the 1967 Act. A doctor who performs an abortion past the 24-week limit without specific medical justification still faces potential prosecution, including life imprisonment.

The result is an asymmetry: The individual is exempt from criminal liability, while the practitioner is not. By removing legal risk from the woman — particularly in an era of pills by post and self-managed abortion — the law effectively permits abortion on request, even if formal restrictions on providers remain.

Unprecedented levels

This comes at a time when abortion rates have reached unprecedented levels. In January, the government released the 2023 abortion figures for England and Wales. The numbers showed there were 277,970 abortions — the highest recorded since the 1967 Act was introduced. If current trends continue, the U.K. is projected to surpass 300,000 annual terminations when the next figures are released.

Nearly one-third of pregnancies in England and Wales now end in abortion. In 2023, approximately 32% of all conceptions resulted in termination. Much of this increase is attributed to the “pills by post” scheme introduced during COVID-19 and made permanent in 2022. By allowing women to access abortifacients without an in-person consultation, the policy has lowered practical barriers to abortion and accelerated its normalization.

Critics of Clause 208 also point to the absence of a clear public mandate. Despite the scope of the change — effectively eliminating the prospect of prosecution for late-term self-abortion — there was no referendum or broad public consultation.

Polling from Savanta ComRes suggests that while most Britons support access to abortion, only a small minority — around 1% — support access up to birth. The same polling found that 70% of women believe the current 24-week limit should be reduced. On this reading, the law moves in the opposite direction of public sentiment.

RELATED: No more stiff upper lip: My fellow Brits are fed up with 'diversity'

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Sex-selective abortion

Concerns extend beyond process to potential consequences. Baroness Rosa Monckton, a life peer in the U.K.’s House of Lords, warned that the removal of legal liability could encourage sex-selective abortion. The NHS typically discloses fetal sex at the 20-week scan. Without legal deterrence, critics argue, there is little to prevent termination based on sex.

Globally, sex-selective abortion has been documented for decades, particularly in countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, where cultural and economic pressures — especially the dowry system — have historically incentivized a preference for sons. India — the largest country of origin for migrants to the United Kingdom — accounts for roughly half of the world’s “missing females” at birth.

Inevitably, some long-standing cultural traditions have persisted within these communities.

Some institutions dispute that risk. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service has described sex-selective abortion as a myth, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has stated that statistical evidence remains inconclusive.

Imported misogyny

Yet recent data challenges these claims. Analysis from the Department of Health and Social Care found that while sex ratios among first and second births to women of Indian origin align with the national average, third births show a marked imbalance — 118 boys for every 100 girls.

The same analysis estimates that approximately 400 sex-selective abortions of female fetuses of Indian heritage occurred between 2017 and 2021, describing this as the first measurable evidence of the phenomenon in official statistics.

This raises a broader concern that legal changes intended to expand autonomy may also make it easier for society and the state to overlook grave issues such as infanticide, coercion, or sex-selective abortion. In prioritizing rights and compassion for the mother, the law now raises serious questions about the status and protection of the most vulnerable.

Liberal shibboleths

The rise of sex-selective abortion in the U.K. results from the convergence of several misguided liberal shibboleths: that "multiculturalism" permits minority groups to practice antiquated cultural customs in Britain without scrutiny; that rights of citizenship do not require corresponding responsibilities; and that any restrictions on the actions of adult women are automatically sexist and patriarchal.

The implications extend beyond individual cases. At a time when Britain faces rapid demographic change and fewer young people are choosing to start families, abortion is increasingly becoming a question of national survival. If the 300,000 pregnancies ended by abortion each year had gone to term, the U.K. population could have grown by nearly a million over just three years. Instead we rely on immigration to support our aging population, all in service of the "economic growth" idolized by elites.

Britain now faces a choice. Clause 208 is not merely a technical adjustment to outdated law. It marks a turning point — one that forces the country to confront fundamental questions about life, responsibility, and the limits of autonomy.

At Coachella, Sabrina Carpenter Learns There’s A Fine Line Between An Audience And A Woke Mob

The more hypersensitive the culture becomes, the less room there is for authentic interaction.

Sabrina Carpenter CLEARED of 'Islamophobia' after viral ululation confrontation



Pop songstress Sabrina Carpenter dared to express discontent with a different culture, and now she's apologizing for it.

In fact, the young singer had no idea what she was making fun of at the time, but she has been properly re-educated since the incident.

'I don't like it.'

Swiss miss

It was Friday night at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, when Carpenter heard what she thought was "yodeling" from a member of the crowd.

"I think I heard someone yodel," Carpenter said while seated at a piano. "Is that what you're doing?" she asked.

"It's Arab! It's an Arab call!" an audience member can be heard yelling back.

"I don't like it," Carpenter firmly replied.

The 26-year-old offered an awkward smile as the audience member provided further explanation.

"It's my culture!" they offered.

"That's your culture, is yodeling?" the puzzled singer asked back.

Still the fan tried to culturally enrich the Quakertown, Pennsylvania, singer.

"It's Arab, it's a call. It's a call of celebration," they went on, according to 7News Australia.

Seemingly ready to end the exchange, Carpenter jumped in, "Is this Burning Man? What's going on? This is weird."

RELATED: Sabrina Carpenter condemns White House's 'evil and disgusting' use of her song — it responds with ridicule

Trilling tales

Fortunately, the internet stepped in to educate Carpenter, noting that the ululation she heard is called a zaghrouta.

A helpful community note on X described the screams as a "pre-Islamic cultural expression of joy used by Arabs across religions, including Christians, at celebrations."

It added, "It is not an Islamic practice, so Sabrina Carpenter's reaction to the sound does not indicate islamophobia."

OK, but what about ... Arabaphobia? A few cultural commissars tried to make the charge stick, but for the most part, fans were happy to chalk it all up to a misunderstanding.

Carpenter offered a playful apology on her X page, saying that she would welcome any further cultural cries, or yodels, in the future:

"My apologies i didn’t see this person with my eyes and couldn’t hear clearly," she wrote. "My reaction was pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill intended. could have handled it better! now i know what a Zaghrouta is! I welcome all cheers and yodels from here on out."

RELATED: Satan struts at Paris Fashion Week — here are the 3 most demonic designers

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images/The Recording Academy

ICE-capades

Carpenter has not shied away from controversial interactions, especially of the political nature.

In December, she demanded the White House cease using her music in a video that showed people getting arrested, presumably illegal immigrants.

"This video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda," Carpenter replied,

The singer also offered voter registration during her 2024 tour, registering more than 35,000 voters and officially engaging with more than 260,000, according to Variety.

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The return of Drag Queen Story Hour?



I was at my local library recently when I saw something odd on the bulletin board. It looked like a poster for a Drag Queen Story Hour.

They can’t be doing that again? I thought to myself.

Much of drag comedy focuses on the fact that as hard as they try, most men can’t actually pull off impersonating a woman.

In case you don’t remember, Drag Queen Story Hour was one of the most bizarrely inappropriate events ever to appear at your local library.

When these “story hours” first began to proliferate in the late 2010s, the idea of drag queens reading books to very small children set off one of the fiercest battles of the culture wars.

Because it was so transgressive, outrageous, and effective as a way of infuriating the general populace, the proponents of DQSH doubled down on it. They kept pushing it. They founded an NGO. They rammed it down our throats.

Blake Nelson

Queen's gambit

The way DQSH worked: Libraries would hire a professional drag queen to read books to children ages 3 to 11. It was presented to the public as a “fun twist” on the idea of a kindly grandmother or librarian reading to the kids.

The drag queens they hired were adult men from the local area, men who were otherwise employed performing “drag shows” at nightclubs, bars, and private events.

These men dressed up like women — more specifically, super-sexualized women (prostitutes). Then they went on stage and told raunchy stories and sexually explicit jokes. Sometimes they sang songs and did pratfalls, all of which were of a sexual nature.

The understanding was that a drag show would feature explicit sexual content. Which is why they were performed in 21-and-over establishments.

That is, until Drag Queen Story Hour came along. And someone decided that drag queens belonged in libraries, reading to children.

Live, love, laugh

Part of the appeal of drag queens is the humorous sight of a chubby, stubbly, middle-aged man wearing lipstick, mascara, and gigantic false eyelashes. Much of drag comedy focuses on the fact that as hard as they try, most men can’t actually pull off impersonating a woman. And the results of their clumsy failures are often very funny.

Drag shows — or something like them — have appeared in many cultures throughout history. The humor of men pretending to be women is universal. Everyone finds those situations funny.

Everyone, that is, except for 4-year-olds, who might not understand this style of humor just yet. And don’t need to.

The fact is that it would be hard to predict how a small child would react to a professional drag queen in person.

Oh, sure, a child who has been coached and prepped by a progressive parent might enjoy it. But your average child? Especially those under the age of 6? They might be traumatized.

And then doubly so when the adults they usually trust (parents, teachers, librarians) tell them not to be afraid, that it is wrong to feel uncomfortable, that if they have any negative feelings whatsoever about “Miss Wiggles” — who is 6'2", wearing ghoulish makeup, and pretending to be a woman — they are committing a grave moral sin.

Some small children are frightened by the sight of their own parents dressed up in Halloween costumes. Think of what an encounter with “Sashay D. Lite” might do to them.

RELATED: My search for America's last decent public libraries

Joe McNally/Getty Images

Properly checked and vetted

Some conservatives raised the issue that some of these performers might be predators of some kind.

This was met with attacks and smears that conservatives were homophobic, transphobic bigots, hatemongers, etc. Besides, all the drag queens would, of course, be thoroughly screened and vetted.

And yet at a Houston library in 2019, one of the drag queens reading stories to children was found to be a registered child sex offender.

So except for that guy. Everyone else had been properly checked and vetted.

Culture war, wins and losses

Looking back at the original battle over Drag Queen Story Hour ... who actually won?

In my mind, the general public did. Obviously a large majority of people believed DQSH was a bad idea. And the libraries stopped doing it.

But here I was, in my local library, staring at a poster with a Pride flag. And a drag queen. With the words Story Hour on it.

Looking closer, I saw they had changed the name. Now it was called Family Pride Story Hour. It would be specifically for LGBTQ families. A drag queen would be reading the stories. And then there would be a dance.

The suggested age for children attending? “Birth to six years old.”

No rest for the wicked

Ahhh. Those sneaky leftists. They couldn’t let this go. Subjecting infant children to the most grotesque adults they could find was too good a strategy to abandon.

What better way to divide and conquer? To confound and demoralize? They want us to fight over the drag queens again!

My advice is: Don’t do it. Don’t give them what they want. Talk to your librarians ahead of time. Talk to your library’s supervisor.

But be aware: If Family Pride Story Hour is coming to my town, it might well be coming to yours.

Ode to a 1984 Buick Skylark — and to all the other cars of my life



America is a nation of cars.

Those hunks of metal on four rubber tires are our lifelines. They are how we go to work, go home, go out to eat, go on vacation, and go just about everywhere and anywhere. When we are just a few days old, we come home from the hospital in one, and on our way out, we head to the grave in a hearse.

I bought it for $450 from a friend who was moving to New York City. It was cream with a plush, brown interior.

From birth to death; we live in cars.

We love our cars when they work for us, and we hate them when they don’t. We curse them when they break down, when they don’t start, and when they demand $2,750 for a new computer chip just to get running again.

We even mourn them when they break down once and for all — no matter how much grief they've caused us. We become attached to our cars because of course we do. For Americans, they are an inextricable part of life.

1978 Oldsmobile Starfire

And of our history. Cars transport us through space, but also through time — to certain chapters in our lives. A car is a physical reminder of who we were behind that particular wheel.

I remember my first car like we all remember our first car. It’s the first time you are free like an adult even though you are not an adult. You are still very much a stupid kid, but you don’t feel like one in the driver's seat.

Mine was a 1978 Oldsmobile Starfire. It was light blue, and it was my grandpa’s before it was mine. He “sold” it to me for $1. I loved that car. I felt like I was in an old movie when I was driving down the road. I loved looking at it parked. I loved thinking about the fact it was mine. It was so cool, so retro, so rear-wheel drive, so bad in the rain. One morning on the way to school, I drove it off the road and into a ditch, and that was the end of the Starfire.

1993 Plymouth Voyager

My next car was really my parents’ car, and it wasn’t a car; it was a van. They let me use it pretty much whenever I wanted to. It was a white 1993 Plymouth Voyager. The sliding door was full of sand and barely moved. The crank windows weren’t working so great. There was an MP3 player plugged into a tape adapter shoved into the tape deck on the dashboard.

That van is my senior year of high school. I remember driving with my girlfriend to a crappy Chinese restaurant about 40 miles south just for something to do with a pretty girl I liked. We did that a lot. I got two tickets speeding back from her house late at night in that van.

1984 Buick Skylark

After the Voyager, I drove a 1984 Buick Skylark. I bought it for $450 from a friend who was moving to New York City. It was cream with a plush, brown interior. I don’t even know how many miles it had on it, I just knew that it ran, and it ran good.

I drove that thing all over. Up north, over to Detroit, down to Chicago, out to Wisconsin. It had a cigarette lighter and ashtrays. I remember smoking American Spirits in a yellow pack in that car. Driving with the windows down in the summer and slipping around the road in the winter.

The Skylark was my college car. It was an "old" car then, but now it's ancient: 1984 was 42 years ago. I suppose that makes me ancient too.

Four years after I bought the Skylark, I sold her to my brother for $300 and moved to Chicago. I didn’t have a car for almost a decade. I didn’t need one there, and I didn’t need one when I was overseas.

2007 Volvo XC90

The next car I bought was with that old high school girlfriend, now my wife. Right after we got married, we left the city, and so we bought a 2007 Volvo XC90 with about 120,000 miles on it. It cost us $3,600, which we borrowed from my wife’s grandparents. We paid them back over the next year.

We didn’t have the Volvo for too long; it broke down a couple years later. But it was a beast of a car and the first thing we owned together. Thinking about it now, the XC90 was kind of a symbolic introduction to married life. It wasn’t my car; it was our car.

RELATED: My grandpa’s old desk

Michael Brennan/Getty Images

2009 Volvo S70

After the XC90 was a 2009 Volvo S70. It was a fine car, and it was the car in which our son came home from the hospital. That car was us three. First-time parents, firstborn son. That first year with your first kid is special, and that car was where it happened.

The S70 was a little weird. It wouldn’t start if it was colder than 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside. You would think a car from Sweden would be able to handle the cold, but it couldn't. I had to hook it up to a starter that plugged into the wall and juice the battery for 30 minutes if we needed to start it when it was cold.

Our last trip in that car was our trip to the hospital when my wife was in labor and about to give birth to our daughter. In the middle of the night, I drove my wife and our son through a snowstorm to the hospital. We hit a massive piece of ice flying off a plow, the car eventually overheated, and the S70 died on the side of the road somewhere in Northern Michigan at about 4:30 a.m.

My wife took an ambulance to the hospital, my son and I took a cop car behind her, and the Volvo took a tow truck to the scrapyard.

2017 Honda HR-V

A few days later, we got a Honda HR-V from my wife’s then-92-year-old grandmother. She never drove it, and she didn’t need it, so she gave it to us, and it’s been our car ever since. I don’t know how much longer we will have the HR-V. Maybe 10 years, maybe one year. We’ve got three kids in there now, and it can’t take any more. One day, maybe we will be lucky enough to upgrade to an SUV with another row. We’ll see.

I can already tell how we will remember the HR-V. I already know the chapter it will define for us. We will say it was our first real family car, our car when we added two kids and grew a lot in quite a few ways. Our lives have become much better in that car. We’ve experienced some bad stuff in it but much more good on the whole. We grew, that’s for sure. It’s a good car now, and someday we hope to remember it as a great car.

It sounds funny to mark our time by our cars. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s as good a way as any to divide up our time here.

Cars: the things that take us wherever we go.

Guests of the Nation

For evidence of a so-called cultural vibe shift, the pendulum swing away from the extreme sensitivity and irrational wokeness of the preceding decade, look no further than Lionel Shriver’s new novel, A Better Life, a blunt but layered—and entertaining—depiction of America’s once-lax immigration policies.

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He’s Crafty: How George Downing Kept His Head

Today, Sir George Downing is remembered, if at all, for the street and row of brick houses in London that bear his name. This happens to be the address of Britain’s prime ministers, the place where the cabinet meets and where the organs of the British state are meant to be held accountable to the will of the people. It is a great irony then, and perhaps mildly appropriate, that Downing the man was as cynical and traitorous a figure as the 17th century ever produced. Winston Churchill, while residing in his edificial legacy nearly three centuries later, would remember him unflatteringly as "a profiteering contractor." All but forgotten however are the elaborate contours of Downing’s career: spy, diplomat, financier, parliamentarian, early New Englander, and member of Harvard’s first graduating class.

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No One Is Alone, Except Maybe Stephen Sondheim

Despite favoring sometimes-ghastly subjects, overly calculated lyrics, and eminently unhummable music, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim was something of a conservative when it came to acknowledging his forebears. In Sondheim's case, that chiefly meant lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, who gladly accepted the role of substitute father to the boy then known as Stevie—a comprehensively unhappy child of divorce—and even more eagerly agreed to school him in musical-making. That he wanted to make musicals in the first place is a testament to the outsized influence of Hammerstein, who, with composer Richard Rodgers, created such masterpieces as Oklahoma! and South Pacific.

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The case for banning the burqa



Kemi Badenoch — Conservative Party leader, survivor of the 2024 electoral rout, and arguably the sharpest political mind left in British conservatism — is considering a ban on the burqa as part of a broader review of Islamist extremism.

She should stop considering and start legislating.

'Freedom' that produces permanent public anonymity for one group, in spaces where no one else enjoys it, is not freedom’s finest hour.

The case does not begin with Badenoch, and it does not end in Westminster. Across six European democracies — Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland — full or partial bans are already law.

Their constitutions survive. Their Muslim populations remain. The predicted social cataclysm never arrived.

What arrived instead was policy — enforced and producing measurable outcomes.

Facing facts

The deeper question is why the rest of the Western world has been so slow, so squeamish, to reckon with what the burqa actually does in public space.

Full facial concealment — not the hijab, not the headscarf, but the garment that renders a woman’s face entirely invisible — removes her from the basic grammar of human interaction. Faces carry trust, intention, fear, and consent. Humans have read them for a hundred thousand years, and no amount of progressive goodwill has updated the firmware.

When you cannot see someone’s face, you cannot treat the person as a fully present participant in civic life. You can only treat the person as a shape moving through it.

Free societies depend on legibility among their members. Not total transparency — nobody is proposing to ban sunglasses or launch inquiries into wide-brimmed hats — but the basic mutual visibility that public life requires.

Courts require faces. Banks require faces. Polling stations, airports, and schools all require faces. Nobody marches on these institutions screaming tyranny.

Anonymity in shared space has always carried costs, and open societies have never been shy about saying so.

The burqa asks for a permanent exemption from an obligation everyone else accepts without drama.

Enforced invisibility

That exemption makes a certain grim sense in Afghanistan, where the Taliban reinstated the burqa as compulsory law in 2022 — a country where female faces are treated as a political problem requiring a legislative solution. In that context, the garment is a uniform of erasure, imposed top-down by men who find women’s faces inconvenient.

Which makes its romantic defense in the West, as an expression of individual freedom, not just ironic but absurd. The symbol of enforced invisibility does not become an emblem of liberation simply by crossing a border.

The First Amendment crowd — loudest in America, with philosophical cousins across the Atlantic — will say that mandating what a woman removes from her face differs not at all from mandating what she puts on it.

The argument does not survive contact with consistency.

Masks off

Masks at protests are already banned in multiple jurisdictions. Religious exemptions from generally applicable laws have limits even under the most robust free-exercise jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has never held that faith confers a blanket right to opt out of civic norms that apply to everyone else.

Employment Division v. Smith settled that much in 1990, and the decades since have not reversed the principle that neutral, generally applicable laws can coexist with religious freedom without apology.

A ban on full facial concealment in public spaces would likely qualify.

“Freedom” that produces permanent public anonymity for one group, in spaces where no one else enjoys it, is not freedom’s finest hour.

Female agency is the argument’s most seductive register. She chooses this. She owns it. Perhaps. But agency exercised under doctrinal pressure, familial expectation, or community sanction has a habit of resembling choice from a distance.

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Mike Mercury

Feminist exception

Western feminism spent decades insisting that personal preference does not close the conversation when that preference is shaped by systems that constrain what preference can look like. That reasoning dismantled arguments about beauty standards and industries far less coercive than religious orthodoxy.

Applied here — to a garment entire governments have made compulsory — the same movement suddenly finds the question too delicate to pursue.

None of this requires hostility to Islam, to faith, or to religious expression broadly understood.

The headscarf is not the burqa. Private devotion is not public concealment.

People are entitled to their beliefs, entitled to wear almost anything behind their own doors, entitled to worship as conscience directs.

But public space is shared space, and shared space carries shared obligations.

Turning your face away from those obligations — permanently, behind fabric, as a matter of principle — is less religious liberty than a form of civic withdrawal.

There is a meaningful distance between religious expression and civic withdrawal. The burqa travels the full length of it.

Open society? Closed case

British polling puts support for a ban at 56%. For once, democratic instinct and reasoned argument are pulling in the same direction — not always a luxury policymakers enjoy.

In America, a federal ban would face genuine First Amendment scrutiny. The constitutional architecture differs, the judicial culture differs, the politics differ enormously.

But “legally complicated” and “morally unclear” are not synonyms.

Many Americans who correctly distrust government overreach have no difficulty concluding that facial concealment in courtrooms, classrooms, and government offices warrants regulation.

The legal pathway varies by country. The underlying social logic does not.

The burqa is not compatible with open societies. The only remaining question is how long open societies intend to pretend otherwise.

How to Handle Your Out-of-Control Ivy

That video of congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, grilling college presidents about whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their university policies—and the college presidents responding that it depended on the context—has been viewed more than a billion times, making it what the jacket copy of her new book calls "the most-watched congressional hearing in history."

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