Termination of Pregnancy (Information Provided)

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Although the abortion figures for last year were slightly reduced by 3.2%, there were still 200,000 abortions carried out in the UK last year—572 per day. Abortion in this country is an industry from which a small number of organisations and individuals make vast amounts of money. No sensible person would condone this. In examining the legislative abortion procedures of European countries with far lower numbers than ours, it occurred to me that for those countries in which informed consent before an abortion takes place is enshrined in law—Germany, France, Belgium, Finland and others—the abortion rate was much lower. I have deliberately excluded countries with religious and cultural influences, such as Italy, Spain and Portugal from that analysis. It also appears to me that in those countries, the abortion procedure is a far kinder one, which takes much more account of the vulnerable position a woman might be in at the time of her request for an abortion and provides her with alternatives to consider and a cooling-down time in order to think, breathe and take stock of what is happening.

All those countries with good informed consent legislation had significantly lower than average daily abortion rates than the countries that do not have such informed consent legislation. Although a causal link is impossible to prove, these figures suggest that informed consent legislation might prove a good way of reducing Britain’s abortion figures. I think that all Members of all parties are agreed that we want to see that happen.

In this country, if a woman requests a termination from her GP, no questions are asked. I have spoken to numerous GPs and posed this question to them: “When a woman sits in your surgery and asks for a termination, what do you say?” The answer I frequently receive is that the GP does not say anything, but writes a referral letter. That is the process at the GP stage. A referral is made to a hospital or clinic and the abortion is performed, for the woman’s sake, as quickly as possible and without fuss.

Minimal counselling or no counselling is provided in some NHS hospitals and some clinics. Minimal counselling is provided by BPAS—the British Pregnancy Advisory Service—which carries out a large number of abortions on behalf of the NHS. However, BPAS carries out some counselling, but also carries out the abortion, so there is a clear conflict of interest there.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I understand that the counselling provided by abortion providers is Government funded only if the abortion goes ahead. Does my hon. Friend share my concern about that?

[Nadine Dorries]

I am going to come to that very point a little later in my speech. It is one of the main concerns, mainly because no alternative counselling is provided to negate that option.

We all know that when it comes to abortion, the law is indeed an ass. It has no application whatever. We know that the law prohibits social termination—two doctors’ signatures are required—but none of that is ever taken into account. Abortion clinics freely admit that consent forms pile up in their offices, waiting for the second signature, long after the event has taken place.

A woman has an assumed right to choose. However, she apparently has no right whatever to any information on which to make that choice. If any of us were referred to a hospital today for a minor procedure such as an operation for an in-growing toenail, the procedure would be explained to us in detail. We would be made aware of the level of pain we might experience; we would be told exactly what would happen while we were under the anaesthetic; we would be given follow-up appointments to check on the progress of our healing; we would have our dressings changed and have checks for infection. A woman who has an abortion has none of that.

At the end of the day, the woman is discharged out on to the street and left to come to terms with the rollercoaster emotional journey of which she will still be in the midst. Before the woman received the procedure, she might have felt coerced, pressurised or bullied into the abortion. To her, it might have been a life or the beginning of a life—depending on her perspective. She might have had a seed of doubt, but once she was on the conveyor belt to the clinic, she might have felt helpless and unable to step off.

Make no mistake: abortion is not a medical procedure. It is not an in-growing toenail. Abortion is about the ending of a life, or a potential life. It is about a death which is final, and from which there is no going back. The abortion of a baby does not abort the seed of doubt or misgivings that may have been present at the time; that still remains.

Many consultant psychiatrists from the Royal College of Psychiatrists are becoming increasingly concerned about the number of women who are presenting with mental health issues directly linked to previous abortions. A major longitudinal 30-year survey published in The British Journal of Psychiatry in 2008 showed clearly—after adjustment for confounding variables—that women who had had abortions had rates of mental disorder 30% higher than women who had not. The Royal College of Psychiatrists said that, following its position statement on abortion and mental health,

“healthcare professionals who assess or refer women who are requesting an abortion should assess for mental health disorder and for risk factors that may be associated with its subsequent development”.

Nothing remotely like that happens. No consideration whatsoever is taken of the state of a mother’s mental health when she asks for an abortion. If she asks for an abortion, she is given one.

Given the disregard that we have for women seeking this procedure, I am surprised that that figure stands at only 30%. We push vulnerable women through a clinical procedure at great speed to end a life—or, as I said, a potential life—that is growing within them, and we wonder why only 30% have problems in later life. Those are the women who are diagnosed. They are the women who seek help, and whom we know about. We do not know about the others. Is it not time that we started to treat women a little better than this?

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

I am very pleased that my hon. Friend has raised the issue of the rights of women in this context, but what about the fathers? I hope she agrees with me that the law needs to be examined to ensure that the rights of the potential father are taken into consideration.

[Nadine Dorries]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution, but I am afraid that I must stick to the point of the debate, because otherwise we shall run out of time.

Does not the way in which abortions are carried out in this country today almost amount to abuse? We need to take lessons from our European neighbours. In Germany, women are offered counselling and a cooling-off period. That gives them a chance to breathe and think. It gives them support. They are informed about the procedure, and of the possible consequences. They are provided with alternative routes other than the surgical removal of a life. They are given information about adoption—and yes, I know that people throw up their hands in horror when that is mentioned, but it is not our pregnancy, and it is not our baby.

We have no right to institutionalise and frame a decision-making process that is void of choice for the women who seek information. It is a woman’s right to choose, and women should have the right to be given every shred of information that we have and every alternative option. If a woman wants to continue with her pregnancy and deliver her baby for adoption, she should have the right to choose to do so. If she does not, at least she can emerge from the abortion process feeling that she made an informed decision. She can emerge feeling that she went in empowered and not helpless, strong and not vulnerable, and believing that she did the best thing because she knew exactly what she was doing and had full knowledge of every available option. She will be able to draw strength from that in future.

Women are entitled to an option. They are entitled to give informed consent, which should be explicitly supported by pro-choice and pro-life campaigners. When it comes to a decision of such magnitude, it is vital for women to receive information that is absolutely accurate and is given calmly, without coercion or a principled bias and, in particular, without political ideology. Last month ComRes, the pollsters, revealed after an extensive survey that 89% of people agreed with that. They think that women should be entitled to have more information when requesting an abortion. Given that overwhelmingly high figure, it is time that this House paid some attention. I hope the Minister agrees that it is time that we took a little more care of women undergoing such a procedure. It is time that we introduced a statutory process of informed consent and a cooling-off period. The European evidence shows that that could provide us with a considerable reduction in the number of abortions, and everyone would surely welcome that.

I shall finish by mentioning a book which is to be launched this month. It is published by the charity Forsaken, which is neither pro-life nor pro-choice: it is pro-women. For two years, the charity has put together the stories of women suffering from post-abortion syndrome. Reading the book is so heart-wrenching that we just want to reach out and take their pain away, but we cannot. There is no going back. We cannot make it better; abortion is a procedure to end life—it is final.

The women interviewed for this book feel that talking about abortion is taboo. That forces them into silence, leaving them unable to express their suffering. Abortion really is a taboo subject. We will never see an abortion filmed on television; we will never see that screened. It is still the taboo subject that we do not talk about.

One woman in the book describes how even when she told the anaesthetist that she was changing her mind and was having doubts, he pushed her to go ahead. He did so because, if she changed her mind, he would not have been paid. There is the same process as for the counselling. If the woman does not go ahead with the abortion, the clinics are not paid for the counselling, and therefore they need to know that she is going ahead before she is given the counselling—and we can imagine the process that ensues.

I will conclude by reading a paragraph from the book, giving a young girl’s account:

“An uncle dropped me off at the clinic with a letter to give to them. I don’t know what that letter was. At this point, I was holding onto the thought that they were only checking me. The staff at the clinic were very nice there, seemingly courteous and kind. It was not my usual surgery, I did not realise it was an abortion clinic until I was shown into a counsellor’s room. When I went to the counsellor’s room, I was asked: ‘Why don’t you want to keep this pregnancy?’

‘I want it but my family don’t want it,’ I replied, and promptly burst into tears. ‘They won’t support me and I can’t look after it myself.’

Nothing more was said that I remember...I was given a bed—there must have been 20 of us crowded into that ward. I was the first in line. As I waited, I scanned the corridors for some means of escape, but I was already wearing my hospital gown and no underwear. It wasn’t long before a man brought a wheelchair to take me to the operating theatre. For a brief moment I wondered if I had the strength to run away, but instead I sat obediently into the chair.”

That is a story of loneliness, suffering, emptiness and loss that many thousands of women live with day after day. It is they who become the 30%.

It is time for the UK to catch up with the rest of Europe and introduce informed consent in an attempt to ensure that stories like this become a rare exception. It is time for this country to start looking after our young girls and women at the most vulnerable time in their lives and treat them with some respect.