Legal Rights to Access Abortion

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. I am not presenting my views per se; I am presenting the views of the petitioner, and I will go on to discuss how things would work. That is what we have to discuss. The petition presents a particular view and, although I agree with much of that view—not that that is relevant—it is how it would work, as he rightly points out, that we are discussing. It is therefore important that we sit in this Chamber and discuss it, but I thank him for his contribution.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. Is there not something fundamentally naive about a petition that attempts to juxtapose the legal system of the United Kingdom with the very different constitutional and legal system in the United States of America on the basis of fear, misinformation and media reportage, rather than on the basis of fact?

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I fundamentally disagree with those comments. As a woman, to see what has happened in America does give me fear. I do not believe that there is a great amount of misinformation, but I do believe that where we get our information from—the hon. Gentleman raises a valid point—is very, very important. We must not stay in the echo chambers that I spoke of at the beginning of my speech. We must discuss and debate, which is what is so good about this opportunity and the petition.

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[Tonia Antoniazzi]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the aftercare of women who choose or choose not to have a termination. That is something that I feel strongly about—it may be years down the line that someone needs that support, and that support is lacking. I agree with her on that point, and it is something that we need to discuss further.

The threat of prosecution is a real fear; it is a fear that also deters doctors from wanting to enter this fundamental area of women’s healthcare. We are pleased to see early medical abortions being safely offered by GPs in other community settings, as it is in other countries. The fact that all non-hospital-based services must be specifically licensed and approved by the Secretary of State can be a barrier to improving access. Women who are unable to travel to clinics because of distance, personal circumstances —maybe coercive relationships—and medical conditions are poorly served by the current framework. If they take matters into their own hands by accessing pills online, they risk prosecution and prison. To talk of prosecution in these circumstances might seem laughable to some, but a recent Sunday Times investigation found that 52 women since 2015 have been reported to the police for allegedly breaking abortion laws.

I spoke to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, and it is aware of multiple instances where the existing law criminalising abortion has been used against women who have ended their own pregnancy. Some of the examples given include a migrant woman in Oxford in 2021 who obtained and self-administered medication in a failed attempt to end her own pregnancy. When she was taken to hospital, the doctors performed a successful emergency C-section. Seemingly, they then reported her to the police because they found the remnants of medication in her vagina. She is now a parent to a toddler but is still being prosecuted for the attempted procurement of a miscarriage.

In London last year, a woman was admitted to hospital in need of a surgical procedure to empty her uterus after a stillbirth at 24 weeks as a result of abortion care sought within the formal healthcare system. While she was on the ward post procedure, she was arrested by the police. She was taken to a police station and kept in a police cell for 36 hours.

I cannot imagine any woman or girl ever wanting to be in this situation. When a little girl is growing up, she thinks about her lovely family and the children she is going to have. She says, “By the time I am 24, I am going to be married and have 2.3 children. I am going to live this life.” Women have hopes and dreams, and when they find themselves in this situation it is devastating to them, because they do not want to be in the situation and to be treated like that. I feel very strongly that it is really important to have this debate.

[Ian Paisley]

I actually think the hon. Member is absolutely right about the sheer compassion that this issue has to command. There were something like 800,000 pregnancies in the United Kingdom last year. I think that in the past seven or eight years 17 people have been brought up on the issue the hon. Member has identified, and only two have been charged. We are dealing with such a limited, narrow area—it is not widespread—and we need to keep that sense of proportion. It is important that the hon. Member has put those matters on the agenda.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

To be frank, we should have decriminalisation. I do not believe there should be one or two or that any woman should be made to feel like that—

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[Ian Paisley]

How many?

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

It is very difficult. [Interruption.] The hon. Member knows that we will disagree but, fundamentally, the fact that we can have this debate is the most important thing. I have to move on because we just will not agree, but it is important that everybody’s views are heard.

A 15-year-old girl was investigated by the police after a stillbirth at 28 weeks and accused of having an illegal abortion. Her phone and laptop were confiscated during her GCSE exams and she was driven to self-harm by the year-long investigation. Those are moments in a person’s life—in a woman’s life—that have been really impacted. The investigation concluded only when the coroner found that the pregnancy had ended as a result of natural causes. Imagine someone going through that while going through their GCSEs, with their whole life ahead of them.

This is the reality of criminalisation for the women investigated: their lives are being picked apart, they are being treated like criminals and it causes huge disruption. They do not feel safe in accessing medical services and their trust in the health service is undermined. These are often vulnerable women—even children—in desperate situations and with complicated medical histories or mental health problems. Because of the approach of the Crown Prosecution Service, rather than being provided with support in the moment these women face a terrifying journey of criminalisation.

We talk about choice when it comes to abortion, but those who are currently empowered to make choices are not the women who need the services but the police, who chose to investigate, and the CPS, which decides to prosecute. The current law takes fundamental decisions about an individual’s healthcare and hands it to the state. What is most concerning is that the law as it stands could be overturned by the Government of the day without a vote in Parliament.

This is where we perhaps need to look at the position of the current Cabinet and their views on a woman’s ability to access reproductive healthcare, because we can see that the issue is far from settled. I just want to point this out for the record. The Prime Minister has abstained on all votes relating to abortion in England since becoming an MP. That includes the votes on buffer zones and early medical abortion at home—the telemedicine we saw this year.

The Chancellor has been vocal about his desire to halve the time limit in which women can have abortions from 24 weeks to 12 weeks, even breaking the Whip. We say it is a matter of conscience, so I understand. The Home Secretary also voted against telemedicine being made permanent and the legal enforcement of buffer zones in 2022. We need to think about these views. It is right that Caitlin and the more than 150,000 other signatories to the petition are concerned, because if we look at our Parliament, we see that there is a risk of it happening. I totally understand Caitlin’s point of view.

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[Stella Creasy]

I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that if he is dealing with families where that is a possibility, prosecuting a woman who is being asked to have a sex-selective abortion, rather than supporting her or recognising what is happening, is not the way forward. The cases set out so powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower show why decriminalisation is a very live issue. Although it is the 21st century, this country is still prosecuting women for having miscarriages and threatening them with investigation for a healthcare issue. Rather than recognising what other pressures might be in their lives and supporting them, we are criminalising those women, as women were criminalised in the 1800s with the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. I wager that the hon. Gentleman would not want to be on the side of arguing that a piece of legislation that put abortion at the same level as setting fire to this place or indeed murder would be the right way forward.

Right now, the penalty under that legislation is lifetime imprisonment. There may be some people who are comfortable with that, but many of us, who believe that when a woman is seeking healthcare, she deserves our support, compassion and tolerance, are not. For those of us who believe that we should be equals under the law, the question is whether the hon. Gentleman would accept being denied the basic right to decide what happens to his body in a particular circumstance, and for that decision to be taken by two other people who could give him that option only if they agreed that he would go mad or lose his life if he did not have it. I wager that he would not find that acceptable if it was perhaps about having a vasectomy.

[Ian Paisley]

Under the new dispensation that the hon. Member is arguing for, how would she propose to deal with, say, a very difficult case, such as the one brought to prosecution, namely that of Sarah Catt? The judge in that case said that it was not involuntary manslaughter or indeed an offence save murder. How would the hon. Member propose to deal under the new dispensation with a difficult case that the law would ultimately throw up?

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[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I thank you, Sir Charles, for calling me to speak, and the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for the way in which she introduced the petition. It was obvious to most that the hon. Member may not have agreed with everything in the petition—and that places a person in a difficult circumstance when introducing a petition—but I thank her none the less for the gracious way in which she introduced it.

This debate is about the right to an abortion being uniquely enshrined in law in the United Kingdom via a Bill of Rights. It is so unique that something that destroys, not protects, should be put in a Bill of Rights. We need to see this in that light, because we normally bring in laws that have a declaratory positive framework. This has a negative framework. I say that with all true compassion because, as was said in the House, no one wants to see a situation where a woman feels she has to have an abortion or that an abortion is her only way out, but having something enshrined in a Bill of Rights and framed in that new constitutional dispensation would be totally abhorrent to how law should be made in the United Kingdom.

Many of my constituents who have spoken to me about this matter in advance of the debate see it as fundamentally wrong and many have expressed that it is fundamentally evil to create law on the issue of life because it is such a fraught matter, and it is important that that point of view is listened to. Many have talked about the international legal position. The European convention on human rights, which, at best, will be the main template on which a UK Bill of Rights—if it is ever drawn up—will be based, does not enshrine the right to an abortion or to give an abortion. It does not touch on that matter at all for the obvious reasons I have already stated: it is not its place to do so. This is a matter of domestic law, and for the rights that many people on the other side of the argument are seeking to protect, I would go as far as to say that those rights are stronger under our British constitutional system of domestic law than they would be under a rights-based type of law on the matter.

The debate has been shrouded from time to time—not in this Chamber, but outside it in arriving at this petition—in misinformation. We saw the social media issues. In fact, TikTok had to take down some comments. People were being falsely driven to sign the petition on the basis of misinformation. Of course, I still think the debate would have come about, and we should not run away from the issue. I agree with hon. Members, for all different sorts of reasons, that it is important that the debate takes place, but it should not be brought to the House because of misinformation, by a social media campaign, or as a result of a vanity project by someone who wants to clutch to a moment of fame on this matter. That is not the reason we should be doing this; we should be doing it for the right reasons.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

The whole ethos of the Petitions Committee, and the intent of the petitioner—she is sitting in Public Gallery behind the hon. Member, if he would like to speak to her after the debate—is not about that. When we had the debate on assisted dying, there were accusations against groups and organisations. That is not what the Petitions Committee is about. It is not misinformation; it is about where people choose to get their information from. The fact that we are here shows that the Petitions Committee is working, and that a person’s voice can be heard in Parliament.

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[Ian Paisley]

I think the hon. Member maybe misheard me, because I was not challenging the right to have the debate. I was challenging the misinformation on social media that encouraged people to falsely sign the petition. If the debate is so positive, there should be no negativity behind encouraging people to sign it. The word “ethos” is very interesting; its Greek origins show that it should actually be about an ethic. It should be something that has character to it, not something that is denuded of character and strength. I think the hon. Member misheard what I was getting at and the point I was making.

This lays bare how wrong it is—and the falsehood and naivety involved—to bring a debate to this House and try to shape our laws based on experiences of the American legal constitutional system. If we juxtapose them, it just does not work. We have a parliamentary democracy and statute law, versus the written constitution of the United States of America and all the issues that flow from that.

There is then another layer set upon that juxtaposition in saying that this is about fear because of what happened with Roe v. Wade—a completely separate issue again. It is naive to say that we should try to change our whole system to embrace and address that issue because of what has happened in the United States of America. It would be far better having a much more open and honest debate, rather than one that is based on fear of something that might happen.

[Dame Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about not having misinformation. Would he agree with me that we have to be very careful not to conflate deregulation with decriminalisation? I think that happened in a couple of the earlier contributions. The hon. Gentleman will know from Northern Ireland that although we have introduced decriminalisation, that has not deregulated the controls that are there for abortion. That is a really important point.

[Ian Paisley]

That is an important point that I will come to later when I touch on the matter of decriminalisation.

There were 214,869 abortions in 2021. I looked that up. That is about 40,000 people short of the population of Walthamstow. Just think of the number, if we were to line them up. Do you know what that says to me, Sir Charles? It speaks to the utter, abysmal failure of abortion regulations. Why so many? Why, after so many years—decades and decades of this regulation—is that necessary? There were 214,869 women who felt it was necessary to have an abortion.

[Dr Lewis]

I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman, but he is not going to carry the House with an argument that says that the number of abortions is equivalent to the human population of a city when a vast proportion of those abortions will have been at a very early stage—barely fertilised eggs. Although I see Members on the Opposition Benches nodding in agreement with me, I say to them that the demand for an absolute right to abortion similarly but in reverse fails to recognise that a very late-term abortion is killing an embryo that is viable. That is why this is a dialogue of the deaf.

[Ian Paisley]

I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman feels it is a dialogue of the deaf; I do not think that is the case. It is important that we are, for the first time in a long time, actually having a sensible debate on this matter, because in numerous debates on abortion in the past, people—principally male Members of the House—have been silenced. They have been called out, heckled and told not to speak on an issue that does not concern them. Indeed, we heard the comment earlier in the debate that behind every abortion is a woman—full stop. No, no, no: behind every pregnancy is not only a woman but the life of the unborn and the male who was involved in that pregnancy. Until we have full engagement and an educational process that addresses those issues and gets this nation into a proper debate on this matter—not in a climate of fear and of, “I’d better not speak out because we’re not allowed to say these things any more; they are too difficult to say if you’re a man”—I am afraid this will be a debate of the deaf, but it does not have to be. That is the point.

[Carla Lockhart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Men do matter and he is absolutely right to say so. Some 82% of all abortions last year were for women whose marital status was given as single. I commend the men who support their partners and children, and we need more men to do the same. This House is at risk of silencing those men who do stand up and take responsibility for pregnancies.

[Ian Paisley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point.

In 2022, there were double the number of abortions in Northern Ireland than there were in the previous year. The number doubles each year, and will continue to double, because of the very liberal legislation that is now in place in Northern Ireland. The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) put on the record that one in four of all pregnancies in the United Kingdom end in abortion. In England and Wales, abortions can take place up to the extreme limit of six months, whereas the European median time limit is three months. We need to have a debate about why we have an extreme time limit and why some people wish to drive it even further, to the point of birth, as a right. I just think that is wrong.

We certainly need to have a debate about why there is so much abortion in the United Kingdom. To go back to the point made by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), why are second and third-time pregnancies leading to abortion? Why are older women having abortions? Those questions need to be asked. It cannot all be ectopic, it cannot all be rape, it cannot all be incest and it cannot all be miscarriage.

[Stella Creasy]

rose—

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

rose—

[Ian Paisley]

I give way to the hon. Member for Gower.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. He is right to say that no one should be silenced, which is what I wanted to achieve with this debate. Everybody has a choice, but it is ultimately the woman’s body and it is ultimately her choice. We must not conflate that, because it is really important to women and girls everywhere, and not all have the privilege, as we do, to have the comfort of bringing up a child.

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[Ian Paisley]

I understand the hon. Member’s point, but of course there are two sets of DNA, two bloodstreams, two lives and two heartbeats. It is more than just the woman’s body. While I accept that women have a very difficult choice to make and are sometimes put in a horrible position by irresponsible and selfish men, women are sometimes talked out of the choice to protect a life. I have seen and heard it, and I want to make sure that there is a choice to allow the life to flourish and to grow, and that there are other opportunities beyond the womb. That is something that we should of course be dwelling on.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman and I have debated this issue in many different ways, and I know he does not mean to sound like he is suggesting that it is okay if a man tells a woman that she has to have the baby but not okay if he supports her choice to have an abortion. That would be the corollary of what he is saying.

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that when it comes to legalisation in Northern Ireland, we did not just have decriminalisation and we did not just take away the Offences Against the Person Act 1861? We also brought in laws to regulate how a woman can access an abortion. There is no late-term abortion or sex selection in Northern Ireland. The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020 cover precisely those issues, so it is not that enshrining a human rights perspective leads to no regulation; it removes the criminal element of our old regulation and allows us to have these debates.

[Ian Paisley]

Of course, the issue is that the hon. Member cannot say that there is no late termination, because she does not know; she cannot say that there is no sex selection, because she cannot know. The law now masks that and does not allow us to know that, because it is a right to have it as of a right, not because there is a reason. That is the issue. Indeed, I know it is an issue that the hon. Member would like to have here—I know she would like to have termination right up to the point of birth, for whatever reason. It is an issue—

[Stella Creasy]

That is a misrepresentation.

[Ian Paisley]

Maybe the hon. Member does not want it right up to the point of birth, but she certainly wants the most liberal interpretation of the law that is possible. We will disagree on that, but the attempt to silence people from having the conversation on this matter is of course morally wrong. I hope we never get to that position.

I said that I wanted to touch on the issue of decriminalisation, because that has been an important point in this debate and there are difficult cases. Of course, we are talking about such a small number, which was touched on earlier: 17 cases in seven or eight years, I think, in the United Kingdom. Yes, it was difficult for the 17 people who have been questioned on this matter, and more difficult for the two people who have been charged.

Let us deal with one of the cases in which a charge was brought: that of Sarah Catt in 2010. The examples of women who were prosecuted following late-term abortions include Sarah Catt in 2010, who took abortion pills at a 38 or 39-week gestation and then buried the body of the child. The judge in the case said that

“all right-thinking people would consider this more serious than involuntary manslaughter or indeed any offence save murder.”

The judge also said that no remorse was detected. How would that case be dealt with under a new dispensation where there is no criminalisation? Would we create a gap in the law that would allow for people to, quite frankly, get away with murder? That is the unfortunate circumstance.

We also have circumstances in which men wrongly try to enforce or encourage an abortion on a partner who is pregnant by hiding tablets, by putting tablets into a drink to spike it, or by trying to encourage them to have a miscarriage and forcing that. With decriminalisation, how would a clever lawyer get those people off that particular charge? It would happen.

We could enter into this new dispensation of a rights base—putting this into the Bill of Rights in the United Kingdom—that would be abhorrent in terms of the law, because there are people who, unfortunately, do commit criminal offences and do commit them around pregnant women, and there are women who are pregnant and commit such offences, and the law should try to deal with it. Yes, the law should deal with it sensitively, but it should deal with it proportionately. I think 17 cases in seven years is proportionate, given that we have about 900,000 pregnancies in the United Kingdom annually.