Abortion

Baroness Knight of Collingtree Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take to investigate reported law breaking by those carrying out terminations of pregnancies.

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree (Con)]

My Lords, normally, when a Bill has been debated, taken through Committee and approved by both Houses, it is signed by the Queen and becomes an Act. After that, those breaking it will face possible arrest, fines or even imprisonment—unless it is the Abortion Act 1967. I well recall its passage; there were firm reassurances that its strictures would not permit abortion on demand. Today, more than 7 million abortions later, we have exactly that. So much has the Act been watered down and its safeguards ignored that it is now being quoted to warn those who will soon vote on euthanasia. It is an apt comparison because both deal with life and death. The warning is that the triple lock of the Falconer Bill is modelled on the wording of the old 1967 Act and will turn out just as ineffective.

The Abortion Act is four pages long and contains only seven sections. At least four seem to be broken regularly, yet it is impossible to get details of investigations into this law-breaking or about any resulting prosecutions. Section 1 lists a vital condition on which abortion became legal: that two doctors must see and examine the patient and certify that the operation would be legal. The object of that was to ensure that—on such a serious matter as the death of a child—a second opinion had been sought and two doctors separately concurred. Last year, the NHS’s own inspectors found bundles of forms signed by doctors in 14 hospitals, certifying that they had seen and examined the patient. Their medical and independent judgment agreed that she met the conditions for a legal abortion. All these doctors lied. I understand that there were 76 of them. They had neither seen nor examined the woman; they and the doctors who subsequently performed the abortion broke the law. Falsifying official forms is perjury.

Never, until now, has it been acceptable to pass the job of dealing with law-breakers from the British courts to those representing the professions or trade unions of the very people breaking the law. The GMC dealt with that case, which would have been fine if it had just been a question of medical ethics but it was not—it dealt with the law of the land. The medical profession is now saying that since it thinks that a second opinion is unnecessary, it will not seek one. Surely it must be Parliament, not doctors, that decides what the law says. The Act is unequivocal: involving two doctors is its first condition. Nowhere does it give a proviso that any part can be ignored if anyone disagrees.

Section 1 also rules that no abortion is legal unless the woman’s heath or mental state would be at risk without one, or if her existing children faced physical or mental abnormalities of some kind if she did not have it. Are such judgments routinely made? I have met and talked to a number of girls who have had a termination. Not one has ever been able to tell me of tests or questions about that, or checks on their children’s likelihood to be made ill, mad or slightly mad. Very few of those I spoke to had any children at all.

Then there is Section 4, giving everyone the right to refuse to take part in an abortion if they have a conscientious objection. That is the law. The truth is that the NHS does not and will not employ any midwife who has such an objection. A very senior doctor in this House told me only last week that large numbers of them have emigrated. I have never heard even a whisper of any legal action against those who break Section 4. Why is that? The Act certainly does not deny a conscientious midwife the right to a job.

What investigations are being done on allegations and evidence that abortions happen because the unborn child is a girl? Last week, the Prime Minister stated firmly and clearly that that was illegal. If it is, surely checks should be going on into whether these reports are true. I wonder whether his statement was based on the words of my noble friend Lord Howe:

“Abortion on the grounds of gender alone is illegal … The Abortion Act is very clear on that point”.—[Official Report, 12/2/14; col. 639.]

I have checked the Act a number of times and all the amendments very carefully. There are no such words or clarity in the whole lot of them. It would amaze me if there had been, for none of us dreamed then that it would become possible to know the sex of an unborn child. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, would never have sanctioned gender abortions.

Abortion law surely lacks clarity on matters that need to be clear. Furthermore, it suffers from those who play with words to the extent that it permits terminations that were never intended to be legal. In no way do I seek in the debate this afternoon to discuss the right and wrongs of abortion—there are many different views in this House on that. I do not mean to go into any of that. All I ask is that the law, as passed by Parliament, should be clear and upheld. Surely that is not an unreasonable request.