Rachel Maclean

My former X account was hacked and @X ”could not verify who I was” even though I took it all the way to their Head of Global Affairs. Thanks @elonmusk for nothing. So I start again with a clean slate - or screen; no followers and no Labour trolls. Heaven. Still got my Redditch roots though. Unfashionably, I do love X and so I will be posting. I also love politics, Conservatism, God and this country. 🇬🇧 Looking forward to finding some new voices to follow. Let me know if I should follow you. Bad mannered people will be blocked. I don’t have to put up with that kind of rubbish anymore!

The tyranny of niceness. Exactly

@bea_johanssen Exactly

@redditchrache When last polled, a majority of women polled supported a *reduction* in the abortion time limit. There is no democratic mandate for Labour's amendment.

SEX SELECTIVE ABORTION UP TO BIRTH NOW LEGAL When I was pregnant in the 90s in Solihull, West Midlands we were all told by doctors, nurses and midwives that we could not find out the sex of our child during scans, even if the professional doing the scan in an NHS clinic could see what it was on the screen. The reason was that the local Asian communities around Birmingham would abort female foetuses. This was not a right wing talking point. It was official NHS policy and discussed openly. Friends in other parts of the country without large Asian populations could have scans to find out the sex of their babies on the NHS. Now, Parliament has legalised any woman aborting a foetus up until birth for any reason. Including if it is the wrong sex. This is deeply disturbing, very very sad and totally against British values. In fact only tiny numbers of the population support this. All those Labour MPs and peers who voted for this should be ashamed. The left are always trying to foist this on us under the spin of it being "pro woman" and "pro choice". There is nothing pro woman about this. And there is certainly no consideration at all for the unborn child. I support abortion rights up until the current limit which is already very liberal compared to other countries. It makes me personally uncomfortable but I do accept it is important to have the choice for women, and I would not want to see that rolled back. But what the Lords voted for last night is morally reprehensible and utterly wrong. I voted against it but there were not enough of us.

@ayeshahazarika You shouldn’t be proud of this, it’s extreme and wrong and not where public opinion is at all

Dark day - this is so bleak and will lead to awful things happening, including coercion

Yes this was an excellent speech. It was extremely disappointing for those of us in the Chamber, as I was throughout, that we were unable to speak even though we wanted to due to the rushed and angry nature of proceedings and the pressure put on us by the government chief whip. Had I been able to speak I would have pointed out how unpopular this policy is with the public. Only 1% of the public support abortion up to birth - which we need to be clear would be the effect of clause 208: babies could be aborted up to full-term away from a clinical context with no legal deterrent. This is an extreme measure. Polling published in The Telegraph less than two years ago found that only 16% of the public support removing the legal deterrent against abortions after 24 weeks, with 55% supporting the current deterrent. A poll last June found that out of 20 possible political priorities for the coming year, the public ranked introducing abortion up to birth at the very bottom. When it comes to the small number of prosecutions that are used to argue in favour of clause 208, only 8% of the public blame the current law prohibiting abortions after 24 weeks as the cause of the problem. When asked where the blame should lie, considerably more people held that abortion providers, the pills by post scheme or the women themselves are responsible in such cases. We were told time and again by proposers of this clause that it is only vulnerable women who are affected and these women should not be prosecuted. There is no evidence for this. I'm afraid women have affairs, or have other reasons to abort a child. Women are not saints. We should not pretend that they are. The three high profile cases most cited by campaigners involved women aged 35–44, none were shown to be victims of abuse, and one was acquitted by a jury. The 'vulnerable young victim' framing doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We have opened the door to sex selective abortion, opposed by 91% of women. We all know that it is only some communities with non British values who make up the 9% who support this. I had all my children in the Birmingham area and scanning for sex before birth was explicitly banned because the local Asian communities would exploit that to abort girls. That was official NHS policy and we were all told that in black and white by doctors, nurses and midwives, so don't try to pretend this is a right wing talking point. Friends living elsewhere in the country were able to have pre birth sex scans on the NHS. Two-thirds of women support a return to in-person consultations and a mere 4% support the continuation of the current scheme. We are wildly out of step with public opinion. I received hundreds of letters including from teenagers. All were strongly opposed to this policy. Yet campaigners pushed on and unfortunately their side of the argument won the votes. It is a sad day.

@redditchrache this bill would allow less females to be born - gender selection is sadly on the rise - how's that for women's rights? Do we really want to promote the destruction of our grandchildren? Fertility education & praise for motherhood would mean much less unwanted pregnancies

I will be in the Lords this evening to join together with other peers to vote against these proposals. I support abortion, within the current constraints and time limits. I think that it is important we retain abortion rights. However, what is in front of us is extreme and it is something, that the left are constantly attempting to foist on us under the guise of "women's rights". It is no such thing. It is extremely dangerous to women and amounts to an an abuser's charter. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

You missed “period poverty” which is another nonsense

There are a lot of sordid things about the Mandelson affair. But the spectacle of Jess Phillips debasing herself in defence of the indefensible is right up there. Imagine what she would be saying if it was a Tory Prime Minister at the centre of this.

@MinnOrchia “A woman with a penis”. Listen to yourself

@redditchrache One does not follow from the other. A woman with a penis is capable of committing rape. A man without one is not.

Worth reminding everyone again that women anatomically and legally can’t commit rape. It requires a penis.

She should also read out the names of all the victims of the rape gangs - the enquiry into which she has voted against and then sabotaged at every turn

@BenGunnEx @elfatihaa_ In that case it is sexual assault. Not rape.

@elfatihaa_ @redditchrache Not true. CDC data shows women force sex as often as men. Next...

The number of people getting signed off sick for mental health problems is soaring, and the government is doing nothing. When I was in charge at DWP we got the NHS to start trialling moving fit notes away from GPs, but Labour have stopped it. Making GPs the gatekeepers for the benefits system puts them in an impossible position. It undermines the doctor-patient relationship. Some say patients get aggressive if they try to refuse a fit note and they worry for their safety. One GP in the BBC’s investigation said they had a patient say their anxiety meant they couldn’t work but they’d seen them out partying the night before. We had started reforming the fit note, then Labour came in and halted it. They even refused to publish a response to the consultation we ran. Last year the Labour government said: “The Government has no current plans to reform the fit note.” No wonder the benefits bill is soaring.

As ever the left confuses being something with doing something. Phillips is the foremost example of this attitude. These Labour MPs think because they’re Labour they are simply better because they care more and they are not right wing. Or some other nonsense. Actually doing something doesn’t matter. In the PMs case it is not even clear that he actually cares about much.

@grahamchatterl2 Please read the post before shouting insults

@redditchrache Or maybe more people started to be more accepting and aware Not you obviously

We now know that encouraging children and young people to unquestioningly self identify as a different gender causes significant harms. This was also something that we were not supposed to question or we were accused of ignorance. The parallels with self identification as neurodiverse, and the subsequent explosion of special needs in schools is staring us in the face. The risks to children and teenagers are not surgical, but we are still medicating and providing large scale and expensive interventions based on someone's tik tok viewing. Me on the government's white paper on SEND @rightwingwoman/p-189963484" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@rightwingwoma…

@Derinda123 @IGMansfield Followed, pls DM.

@redditchrache @IGMansfield I live not far from Redditch and would love to chat to you about this subject.

I've seen a lot of posts on here about the backlash to Dame Uta Frith's comments on the autism spectrum. Here is the second piece in my series on the SEND reforms. The first one got backlash and I blocked people who were openly trolling or denying facts. Will do so again. I'm a non expert. But non experts are parents, taxpayers, and families. We have a stake in this. I'm a legislator and will be expected to scrutinise and vote. Please read the entire piece before jumping to the keyboard. I am interested in reasonable, critical responses. open.substack.com/pub/rightwingw…

@NicolaBown1 @michael_merrick Exactly

@michael_merrick I'm really struck by the similarities between 'SEND discourse' and Trans. Disagreement = attack/harm; suicide used to shut down questions; approval conditional on complete acceptance of the narrative; prevalance among liberal middle classes.

Lots of comments like this recently, leaving me increasingly convinced that SEND discussions have become an intersectional extension of the privilege-hierarchy discourse, leaving vulnerable kids caught up in the identity perspectives of adults