Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill [HL]

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 21st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, debates about the availability of abortion are always harrowing, whatever side of the argument we take, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, on a brilliant and very moving speech. This debate is doubly difficult because I feel that I am under pressure to say what the noble Lord wants to hear. No one can deny the amazing contribution that disabled people make to our lives in this country, and the insight and experience that they bring to us, even here in the House of Lords. That contribution is enormous.

However, I must give the other point of view. I must speak from the experience I have had as a GP and family planning doctor working with mothers, babies and children for most of my professional life, having, over many years, to advise and counsel women who find themselves pregnant in circumstances in which they cannot contemplate having a child to rear. Their voice must be heard too and I beg noble Lords to listen.

It is difficult enough when a woman has to make a decision early on in pregnancy, not knowing the development—normal or otherwise—of her foetus. It is much more difficult when a woman is carrying a foetus that has been shown to have a severe disability. Through no fault of the mother, this is often not definitely diagnosed until the later stages of pregnancy—hence the exceptions made in existing legislation. That is currently the problem: often the diagnosis cannot be confirmed and the decision cannot be made before 24 weeks.

In my experience, it is untrue and cruel to suggest that women who, in the later stages of pregnancy, undergo abortion because of foetal abnormality are doing it simply because they want a “perfect baby” and that they want to discriminate against disabled people. They have to take into consideration the effect on themselves and their ability to cope, as well as the ability and tolerance of their partner and family to cope in the future. It has to be recognised that a severely disabled child can—although not always—have a huge impact on existing children in the family, however much support is or is not given by the NHS and social services, and we know that that support is often deficient. These women have to make the decision, which is theirs alone, and I say that they have the right to decide.

There is no contradiction in my mind in campaigning for the rights of disabled people alongside the right of a woman to choose what she does with her own body. We have to accept that. A pregnant woman should not be used as a campaign tool for the rights of disabled people. We must also acknowledge that any unborn child needs a willing mother to nurture it and, if that mother is unable or unwilling to do so, we must respect that choice. To impose a duty on a woman to bear a child whom she did not want and give birth to that child after many weeks knowing what the baby’s condition will be is cruel and heartless and should not be done. I beg noble Lords to support the right of a woman to choose in this situation. For the time being, the law should remain as it is.

Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill [HL]

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Winston. He and I go back together a long time to when we both created life—I as lawyer and he as expert witness—in Diane Blood’s case. As a result of that case, she was able to create two boys using her dead husband’s sperm. I listened with care to his speech. We are privileged to have him, one of the greatest experts in the country on the subject, and I agree entirely with his speech; I simply do not agree with the amendment, and I need to explain why.

I am a man; I am not, as far as I am aware, disabled at the moment; and I am not a doctor, so what is my reason for speaking on this subject, as I believe that it is very much up to the woman and parents, not to others, to decide whether to have babies? The reason I speak is because of my experience when I was counsel for the Family Planning Association in Northern Ireland, in a case that went to the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland seeking to provide guidance to women in Northern Ireland, where, as your Lordships will know, there is no abortion Act in force, only the common law. The problem in Northern Ireland was, and is: what kind of medical service should be provided to those women in a common-law situation without the Abortion Act?

What I discovered during the course of the case and told the Court of Appeal, which was pretty disturbed by it, was that the one situation in Northern Ireland where women can get abortions without having to come to England, Scotland or Wales is on the grounds of foetal abnormality. They do so at common law, and they do so quite regularly. They do so without the benefits or burdens of the Abortion Act. My difficulty with the Bill, but my particular difficulty with the amendment, is that were it or anything like it passed, we would go back to the common law position, which is very uncertain and vague, but encourages the worst thing of all, which is backstreet abortions. The more difficult you make it to terminate pregnancies against the wishes of the woman, the more likely it is that she will be driven to other ways of aborting the foetus. That seems to me profoundly undesirable.

I understand perfectly well where the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is coming from with his amendment, but it cuts down the situation in which abortions are lawful under the Abortion Act and should remain lawful: where there is foetal abnormality but the foetus is unlikely to die when born. It should not be our function to limit the circumstances in which there can be a termination, given all the safeguards in the Bill about the medical profession and its ethics, which the noble Lord has talked about. Therefore, although I agree entirely with his speech, I cannot support his amendment.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak to the amendment, but I have to stand up as a fellow medical practitioner—if a very humble one—to say that whenever the noble Lord, Lord Winston, speaks on his subject in this Chamber, he makes me feel young again. I am again a medical student listening to one of the best profs give a superb tutorial, and I thank him for that, because it was extremely useful. I add only a couple of things. I get very tired of people arguing that doctors assist women towards having an abortion—that somehow they want to get on with it, are complicit and do not allow women enough time. In my experience as a family planning doctor, and even when I was a Member of Parliament, I never came across examples of this. Women are listened to very carefully and allowed to make up their own mind. Allowing women to have the choice is essential.

A number of people say that women are terribly upset and traumatised after they have had an abortion. That is, again, a rarity. Usually, if they have had the right counselling and right termination, when they have had the abortion for whatever reason—particularly in the cases we are discussing this afternoon—there is a sense of great relief at being able to get on with their own lives. If the Bill went through we would be taking that away from a large number of women and I would deplore that.