Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill [HL]

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, this is not my area of expertise. Like the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, my background is in local government and business. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, I do not think that we should be passing legislation on which areas of health we should collect data on. Certainly, we should collect the data, and certainly our job in this House is to question inconsistencies, but it is not to legislate for them.

The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, criticised the British Pregnancy Advisory Service for talking about “exceptionalism”. In fact, at the heart of this Bill there is an illogicality. It tries to collect data just on the abortions and is not looking at the complications—for example, of women having to carry to term babies that, for a multitude of reasons, they would have chosen to abort.

On the face of it, this is a very logical Bill, but I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Barker and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for laying out the context and background. When I looked at the last Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on sentience, I got a clue as to where he is going with this whole thing. That is why I have chosen to speak briefly today.

I deeply believe in a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. Women’s rights, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, said when she was talking about her Bill on peace, are being rolled back across the world and it is our job to make sure that we uphold them. It has taken centuries to get to a place where back-street abortions are a thing of the past in this country, and I do not wish to see us make any move that makes us arrive at a place of less safety. It took so much effort to get women to a place of greater safety and we must stop any attempt to reverse that.