Induced Abortion

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Such debates in this place—I have attended a few—are deeply polarised, and often quite unpleasant, between those who assert the right to life and those who equally emphatically assert the right to choose, which is strange because both rights are then usually qualified by those who uphold them. I think all hon. Members would agree that there are circumstances where either right can be overridden and I know no one who does not believe this. The dividing issue between hon. Members in this Chamber is the limits of abortion, and such a debate is necessarily about how much or how little abortion is permissible. To be honest, those who argue for limits often favour much less abortion, or rare abortion, and constrained choice for the woman. That by itself is not an argument against discussing the limits rationally.

We are not helped much by the fact that two sorts of argument are given for abortion in law: one is about the preferences or the good of the woman, where her mental health, usually, and sometimes her physical health is the issue; the other is about the hypothetical preferences of the foetus, in cases of severe abnormality, where gross deformity or suffering is in prospect. There are, therefore, two different sorts of abortion, and it is not obvious to me that the same limits should apply to both types. A problem in discussing the current limits is that the cases that would immediately be affected by a small reduction would disproportionately fall into the latter category—deformity and so on. Such cases are rare and untypical, and that slightly skews our debate. It is a mistake, in this debate, to confound the two types of abortion.

Much, perhaps most, current debate has been centred on the viability of the foetus at certain stages—its ability to survive with or without medical assistance outside the womb. Of course, that varies depending upon the quality of that medical assistance, which we would all agree has improved enormously. On my way here, I read a story in Metro of a baby who survived being born below the abortion limit and was looking happily out of the pages of the paper. This kind of evidence is often cited as new scientific evidence about what we can achieve. We may achieve still more in future.

Some argue that we should not think simply of the survival of the foetus, but of its ability to thrive, lead a quality life, have full use of mental faculties and so on. It is legitimate to say that mortality and impairment is high among babies born prematurely.

[Nadine Dorries]

On the important matter of viability, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that, post-20 weeks, the method of aborting a baby is to administer a lethal injection into the baby’s heart via the mother’s abdomen, to ensure that the baby is delivered dead, not alive. That is why that procedure was invented, created and introduced. That in itself is an argument for viability below 24 weeks, because if there was no chance of viability below 24 weeks, there would be no need to introduce a lethal injection procedure.

[John Pugh]

I accept that point, but we must be aware that there is an argument that the abortion limit should be set at a point where a statistically significant number of foetuses can be shown not just to have survived, but to have thrived. That position is somewhat arbitrary. I see no obvious reason why obstetrics should not continue to improve and the issue continue to haunt us.

I find all this talk about survivability somewhat confusing, because at no stage is the human infant capable of independent survival. Some societies, and indeed some philosophers, have argued that a severely deformed infant born at full term, incapable naturally of living without abnormal intervention and presenting all those features that would have justified abortion should be allowed to perish or may be killed. I do not accept that view, but I recognise that it has been put.

What scientific evidence shows about survival prospects strikes me as relevant but not crucially so. Survivability is only relevant because it stands proxy for something else. No one argues that a baby that can survive and show all the signs of conscious, individual life was not conscious from the moment of its birth and capable of wilful behaviour, having feelings, sentience and so on. Equally, it is hard to argue that were they in the womb that would not also be exactly the case. To kill such a baby, or a baby of such an age, while it is in the womb is thus, logically, to kill a sentient, conscious, wilful and, indeed, innocent human being, and one needs a good reason to justify that type of behaviour. The paramount wishes of the mother simply do not seem to be a good enough reason.

Where consciousness can be presumed, or to put it more strongly, where complete unconsciousness cannot be assumed, the rights of the child in my view would ordinarily trump the rights of the mother. A precautionary principle should kick in, but it clearly does not do so within the existing framework. That is why it is important that we have this debate.

I accept that there is a different argument to be had about the destruction in the womb of human life that we would all agree not to be conscious, and that falls back upon religious views about respect for individual human life, including the potentially, but not actually, conscious. The mediaeval Church made that distinction. But the argument that we must take sentience seriously rests upon our ordinary moral intuitions about the value of individual existence. The debate simply will not go away until we align the law with our basic moral intuitions. I applaud those, including the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who simply alerted us to this fact and indicated that we really must have this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh]

Why are we discussing now matters that we could have discussed in 2008? The hon. Lady is relatively new to the House. She will be aware that whenever the issue has been raised formally in the House, the lid has been put on it pretty quickly, so there has not been a thorough and exhaustive debate that might help matters.

[Julie Elliott]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

MPs must act with responsibility, and always consider the impact on our constituents and the wider population of issues that we bring to the House. We must not scaremonger, or involve issues of guilt, which has happened in some contributions today. I am wholly opposed to that.

I return to what I said at the beginning—why have this debate now? I cannot see any medical or logical reason for it now because no new evidence has come forward since it was last discussed in 2008. If there was new evidence, I would be happy to have the debate. My mind is not closed to changing the limit ever, and if medical evidence suggests strongly that survival rates may be lower than at 24 weeks, that would be the time to consider the issue, not now.