Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness O'Loan

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

‘I was very grateful that the gynaecologist who saw my own children into the world did not support abortion. That gave my wife and I great confidence in the lady who was our gynaecologist. I think there should be scope within the service for people to have alternative views. If the phrase “don’t join the service” that the noble Baroness used were to apply, it would mean that people like that would not be able to join the service in the first place.

Another change that has taken place in these years is that it was never envisaged in 1967 that abortion would happen on a regular day-by-day basis on the scale on which it is taking place. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, often said that it would occur only in rare and exceptional circumstances. There are now examples of some people who have had eight abortions under the National Health Service. You have to ask the question the noble Baroness often asks: “Why is not more done earlier to find alternatives to this?” That too should be in the scope of an inquiry into the workings of the 1967 Act, and so too should be the issue of gender abortions. If I was working in the National Health Service and was told that I had to facilitate the ending of the life of a little girl merely because she was a little girl, I would say no. The 1967 Act surely does not allow for that, and yet we know that there have been such cases and that the authorities decided not to take any legal action. Indeed, there was a vote in another place on a Bill to outlaw such gender abortions. It was lost by 201 votes to 292, so this is not the realms of fantasy. Noble Lords have to ask themselves precisely what their red line would be in regard to questions such as this.

I conclude by giving two opinions from people who have thought about these things in great detail. One is from Professor Andrew Tettenborn, who said:

“The point matters a great deal. Many NHS hospitals now put abortion and other controversial procedures out to tender (a matter itself a cause for concern … and so organisation rather than participation is increasingly what will be demanded from … unwilling staff”.


I also refer the Committee to the review of Dr Mary Neal, senior lecturer in law at Strathclyde University, who said:

“The core purpose of any conscience provision is to protect individuals from having to share in moral responsibility for something they consider to be seriously wrong. Since the current law leaves some of those who would share in responsibility unprotected, it fails to fulfil this core purpose”.


So when the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said in 1967:

“The Bill imposes no obligation on anyone to participate in an operation”,


I believe he was sincere. When he also said that the “conscience” clause,

“also gives nurses and hospital employees a clear right to opt out”—[Official Report, Commons, 13/7/1967; col. 1318.],

I believe that is what he intended. I do not believe he intended that people such as Mary Doogan should lose their job. That is why my noble friend’s Bill is so important.

[Baroness O'Loan]

My Lords, I have listened with great care to the various speakers who have articulated their views on this group of amendments. It has been a very profound and interesting debate and I thank all contributors.

As I said at Second Reading, the Bill does not seek to limit access to abortion. It could never result in a patient who had expressed a wish not to be resuscitated in an advance decision being forcibly treated. It would not result in treatment, hydration or nutrition being withdrawn from someone who wanted to live. For the avoidance of doubt, it is only about enabling medical practitioners to withdraw from treatment which they perceive for moral or philosophical reasons, or for reasons of belief, to lead inevitably to death, whether of a living person or of an unborn child. It is not about doing things to patients; it is about some medical practitioners not having to do some things.

I want to allude for a moment to the various contributions on the subject of what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, said. I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said—that Parliament could not have envisaged the way in which the abortion law would develop. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, chose the narrow meaning on the basis that it was more likely to have been in the contemplation of Parliament when the Act was passed. She acknowledged the existence of a broader interpretation. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, very clearly said, we have the right, as a Parliament, to change things. I am suggesting that we need now to contemplate the situation in 2018, not the situation in 1967, so it is not about refusing people access to treatment. There have been suggestions that it is about denying patient autonomy. A patient does not have and never has had the right to compel a particular practitioner to do a particular medical procedure. However, they have the right to a service and the right, if they want it, to a second opinion, and that must continue.