“This is the text of a speech that was due to be given at Christ Church college yesterday. The speech was not delivered following protests by the Oxford University Student Union Women’s Campaign.

I’m not here tonight to debate whether or not abortion should be legal – so if anyone wants to ask what should be done about abortion in cases of incest or rape please don’t waste your time. Most people accept that abortion is in certain circumstances a tragic necessity and is here to stay. No, I’m here to debate this specific motion – whether or not the abortion culture harms Britain.

I define the abortion culture as a culture in which abortion is used so often that it begins to look like it’s being treated as a regular form of contraception (which the numbers suggest) and in which there is a widespread view that it is a right, carries no risks and in fact represents some kind of liberation for the women for whom it is available. In an abortion culture, it would be controversial to near-impossible to debate the this of terminating a pregnancy – and the attempts to close down this reasonable discussion suggestions that such a culture exists.

But I think that the abortion culture actually makes certain injustices in our society worse. And anyone who truly cares about the freedom and rights of women – and that is all of us – has to be prepared to look again at the evidence of what abortion on demand does to us. And how silence on its effects harms certain minority groups.

First, the numbers. The abortion statistics for 2013 tell a

grim story. There were 185,331 in that year. Of which, only 1

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