Health and Care Bill

Debate between Steve Brine and Caroline Johnson

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I would like to draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial International, and particularly, since these organisations have been mentioned, to state that I am a member of the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

The measure relating to amendment 92 was introduced in the context of the pandemic. The reason that the rules were brought in the first place was to protect women from coronavirus and to reduce its spread within society at a time when we did not have a vaccine. For me, this debate is not about ideology at all—it is not about the rights or wrongs of abortion, whether women should or should not be able to have abortions, whether or not life begins at birth, or anything of that nature. Society and Parliament have decreed that abortions may take place and that women should have the right to choose, and I support that. For me, this is a debate about women’s safety, particularly the safety of the most vulnerable and marginalised women and girls.

Previously, women would have attended a clinic and been given a tablet and another tablet to take a day or so later, and usually the bleeding would begin in the hours after the second tablet is taken. Under the new process, a woman or girl can speak to somebody on the telephone to arrange for the tablets to be delivered to her, or to be collected by her, and then take the tablets at home. It is very difficult for a clinician to tell whether the woman they are speaking to on the telephone is indeed pregnant. There are not necessarily visible signs of pregnancy below 10 weeks, and palpation of the abdomen would not be expected, so it is not clear to the clinician on the phone whether the woman is pregnant. Clearly, someone believes a woman when she says she is pregnant, but there is no way to be certain. In particular, there is no way to be certain of gestation. Although a woman may know when she has had sex and when her last period was, quite a number of women will bleed in the early stages of pregnancy, and some women mistake those early bleeds for a period, which means that women may believe that they are less pregnant than they are. If they go to a clinic, that can be determined, whereas over the telephone it cannot.

The NNDHP, which my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) mentioned, has found a number of examples since March 2020 of women who have had babies delivered quite significantly later in gestation; they had mid-term to late-term abortions believing that they were early in pregnancy when they were not. The examples included 12 babies who were born with signs of life, so the pregnancy would have been quite advanced. The women thought that they were at less than 10 weeks, or told the doctor that they were at less than 10 weeks, but they were not. In six of those cases, the woman giving birth was herself a child. One can only imagine the distress felt by these women and children when they take an abortion pill to deliver what they believe to be a foetus of less than 10 weeks and out comes a baby of up to 30 weeks’ gestation who may at that point have been alive. It is not rare to have side effects from these tablets. One in 17 women have to attend hospital and 36 women call 999 each month because of complications of taking these medicines at home.

If this measure had been introduced in a proper fashion rather than as part of the coronavirus regulations, we would have discussed it quite thoroughly and made it very clear that it should not apply to children. I do not think that many people in this House would think that a 14-year-old girl should be ringing up and receiving abortion medicines over the telephone, but that is indeed what the legislation allows. People may say that doctors would not do that, but we know that six of the children who delivered babies that they thought were at a much earlier stage were themselves under the age of 18.

[Steve Brine]

Surely the point is that this measure was brought in hastily in a pandemic. Therefore, if Members are not sure today, far from abstain, they should be returning to the status quo pre-pandemic. Then this Government can should consider the issue properly and seriously on its own and ask the House to make a decision.

[Dr Johnson]

I can only absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s intervention.

I also want to talk about coercion, because we know that some women may be coerced into having an abortion.