Abortion Act 1967: 50th Anniversary

Paula Sherriff Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Fifty years ago, the noble Lord Steel and thousands of brave campaigners brought about a momentous change in women’s reproductive rights. It is hard to overstate the benefits that their campaign brought to women. Abortion has gone from being a leading cause of maternal mortality, shockingly responsible for 14% of maternal deaths—a fact that organisations such as the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children do not address when they call for the abolition of the 1967 Act—to being the most common medical or surgical procedure in the UK, one that a third of women will have had by the time they reach 45. We used to be a country where an estimated 87,000 to 100,000 illegal abortions took place every year and where unwanted pregnancies changed the lives of desperate women. Now, 200,000 women a year can access safe, free and legal services on the NHS.

The 1967 Act was a landmark piece of legislation. For a time, it made Britain one of the world leaders in reproductive rights, when this Parliament introduced a humane piece of law. I am disappointed that no Minister from the Department of Health or the Government Equalities Office has attended any of the events marking the enactment of this piece of legislation. I am also disappointed that Ministers have chosen to award funding raised from the tampon tax to Life, which argues for restricting women’s choices on reproductive rights, when so many wonderful charities could have benefited and used the money to empower women and support their choices.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. When I debated with the pro-life charity Life on the radio recently, I was told that if a women it was helping went on to decide to have a termination, it would withdraw support, including housing, from that women. Does she agree that that is incredibly concerning?

[Diana Johnson]

Yes, that is incredibly concerning and I think it is a really bad decision of the Government to award money from the tampon tax to that organisation.

As this House tonight rightly marks the milestone of the Abortion Act, we should also reflect on whether the Act is still fit for purpose. The Abortion Act was never intended to be the end of the campaign for women’s reproductive rights. That point was put succinctly by the late Madeleine Simms, a former campaigner at the Abortion Law Reform Association and one of the architects of the original law. She said:

“The 1967 Abortion Act was a half-way house. It handed the abortion decision to the medical profession. The next stage is to hand this very personal decision to the woman herself.”

I want to turn to why the abortion law needs reforming. Britain’s abortion laws are governed not just by that 50-year-old Act, but by the 88-year-old Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 and the 156-year-old Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Taken together, this is the oldest legal framework for any healthcare procedure in the UK. It is a framework that, astonishingly, still treats the act of abortion as inherently criminal and punishable by life imprisonment. As I have mentioned, one third of women, and the healthcare professionals who support them, are stigmatised by these laws. As Madeleine Simms highlighted, the 1967 Act did not give women authority over their own abortions; it merely handed that authority to the medical profession, subject to the consent of two doctors. No other medical procedure requires the sign-off of two doctors, and nor does that requirement exist in most other countries in which abortion is legal.

While other healthcare areas have moved towards more patient-centred provision, with a better doctor-patient relationship, the provisions of the 1967 Act are, despite the best efforts of healthcare professionals, holding back similar progress in reproductive healthcare. Furthermore, as Professor Lesley Regan of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said:

“No other medical procedure in the UK is so out of step with clinical and technological developments”.

Since 2014, the majority of abortions in England and Wales have been carried out medically, using pills. The 1967 Act was not designed with medical abortions in mind; it was passed when the overwhelming majority of abortions were carried out through surgical techniques.

I regret the fact that, in the 50 years since the Abortion Act was passed, Parliament has mostly shied away from debating issues such as those I have just set out. In March, the House of Commons heard the First Reading of my ten-minute rule Bill on the decriminalisation of abortion in England and Wales. In the 50 years before I introduced the Bill, previous MPs had introduced 11 Bills to amend our abortion laws—seven were private Members’ Bills and four were, like mine, ten-minute rule Bills. All 11 attempted to restrict abortion in some way; not a single one was about improving provision or better supporting women. It seems peculiar that for a procedure so common—one that affects a third of women—the overwhelming parliamentary focus has been on ways to restrict the practice. Had this procedure affected a third of men, it is hard to imagine that we would have debated it in the same way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

At the risk of being really controversial, I think there are lots of elements of counselling for women that are seriously lacking. That possibly reflects the fact that decisions about the welfare of women have generally been taken by men. It is great that there are now lots more women in this House able to influence exactly that.

[Paula Sherriff]

Does the Minister agree that it is imperative that we offer women choice in the decisions they take about their body? Will she give an undertaking this evening to investigate why the Government thought it was appropriate to award the largest sum from the tampon tax fund to an anti-choice organisation?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I understand that the hon. Lady feels strongly about this issue, and nobody can doubt her passion and commitment to women’s welfare. My understanding of the grant she referred to is that it went strictly towards the support of women who chose to go through with the birth. I am happy to look at that further. I am not entirely sure it was the largest donation, but I am happy to look into that. However, the hon. Lady is right when she says there should be genuine choice. We do not want anyone to feel that they cannot have an abortion, any more than we want them to feel that they have to have one. We really want women to be able to make informed choices and to feel empowered to have the child, if that is what they would like to do. The important thing is that we empower women. That is the whole purpose of what we are trying to do here—to empower women and allow them to make choices that are safe for them.

Since the Act was passed, there have been regular calls from all sides of the debate for changes to the legislation, and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North has outlined her views clearly today. As she said, this Government and previous ones have always viewed legislative change as a matter for the House to take a view on, and there are no plans to change that.

The Act was last amended in 1991 by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. This reduced the time limit for most abortions from 28 weeks to 24 weeks. No time limit applies where there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer from a serious handicap or that the pregnancy would cause grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the mother or put her life at risk. So amendments are possible, and it is ultimately Parliament that decides the circumstances under which abortion can be legally undertaken. The Government will always ensure that regulation works to make that as safe as possible.

The hon. Lady outlined clearly her belief that abortion should be decriminalised, and the Government will no doubt take a view as and when she brings forward her Bill, as indeed will the rest of the House. It is true that any abortions conducted outside the grounds in the 1967 Act currently remain a criminal offence, and there is no intention for that issue to be dealt with by anything other than a free vote.

Turning to the impact of the Act in practice, it is important that we remember that, in the years before the Act, abortion was, indeed, the leading cause of maternal mortality in England and Wales. For example, the first confidential inquiry into maternal deaths in 1952, reported 153 deaths from abortion alone. The most recent confidential inquiry report found there were 81 reported deaths in 2012-14 for all direct causes of maternal mortality, such as obstetric complications, interventions and omissions. So since the Act came into force, women in Great Britain have had access to legal and safe abortion services.