Frank Field MP and Nadine Dorries MP are trying to slip changes to the way women access abortion into the Health and Social Care Bill.
They must not be successful.
At the time of writing, Labour MP Frank Fields is working with Tory MP Nadine Dorries[1] to push through harmless-looking but poisonous changes to the Health and Social Care Bill –changes designed to impede women’s access to abortion. Then proposal itself sounds innocuous, calling for “independent counselling” for women seeking abortion. But women already receive impartial, non-directional advice. What the amendments actually seek to do, based on an absurd perception of dangerous vested interests, is not only to remove the obligation of abortion providers to give advice to potential patients, but to ban them from doing so.
Field and Dorries have observed that many current providers of abortion advice, including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, are linked to abortion providers (the BPAS, a registered charity, is indeed “Britains largest single abortion provider”, according to the its own website[2]), and have come to the conclusion that, on account of this connection, the advice they give cannot possibly be impartial. Field and Dorries argue that organisations like the BPAS have too great a vested economic interest in the decisions of the women whom they advise –they see abortion providers as businesses seeking to increase revenue by performing as many abortions as possible, and view any connected advice services as the marketing arm of that business. Diane Abbott has rightly condemned their position as “fundamentally anti-right-to-choose rhetoric which depicts clinics that perform abortions as baby-killing production lines that are only in it for the money”[3].
There are, in fact, many ways in which abortion providers themselves are among the best-qualified organisations to provide advice to women considering ending their pregnancy. Experienced providers are well placed to talk women through all of the options available to them. They have the medical knowledge to be able to answer questions about what happens during the procedure, what the risks are, and what after-care should be like. Moreover, there are already checks in place to ensure that consultations are impartial and high-quality; the BPAS is registered with –and regularly inspected by – the Department of Health. But Field and Dorries would still outlaw their advice.
As the supporters of their amendments know, the organisations poised to take over this vital service are not impartial. Pregnancy advice services with no links to abortion providers usually remain independent from them precisely because they are opposed in principle to abortion. They give scientifically inaccurate information to women to dissuade them from having an abortion. They use harrowing case studies to dissuade women from having an abortion. They refuse to give out the names of abortion providers, so that even if they have failed to persuade a woman that abortion is wrong, she will not know where to go next. Many of these organisations already advertise themselves as independent, impartial, non-directional. They clearly are not.
If Field and Dorries’s efforts are fruitful, counselling advice for vulnerable women will not be high-quality, non-directional or even consistent. Women will fall prey to a post-code lottery, and have to hope that their GP can refer them to a local counselling service which is unconnected to an abortion provider but still able to adequately explain all of their options, inform them of the risks and realities of abortion procedures, and, if necessary, refer them to a clinic. Many investigations over the last decade have revealed that most “independent” abortion counselling clinics do not do this[4]. To deny pregnant women any or all of the information relating to their options is to impede their exercise of their right to access abortion, a right which has been enshrined in law for almost forty-five years.
More importantly, to do so is also to release great potential to delay access to a time-sensitive procedure and to cause unnecessary and unforgivable distress. The proposed changes are a threat to the physical and mental well-being of women seeking abortion. They may be motivated by an anti-choice agenda, but the issue they have raised is more than a pro- or anti-choice issue; it is a welfare issue. Abortion rights are, rightly or (as I believe) wrongly, an issue of conscience for our party. But protecting the welfare of vulnerable people is not. The changes proposed by Field and Dorries may pass into the Bill without debate. They may be debated at Report Stage of the Health and Social Care Bill on 6-7th September. In either case, they should not be allowed to sneak into law without a fuss.
Please urge your local MP to oppose this attack on women’s rights and welfare.
(See the Abortion Rights’ website at http://www.abortionrights.org.uk for a template letter. The site will even find your MP’s contact details for you. )
[1] The same Nadine Dorries who earlier this year suggested that we would be able to reduce the incidence of child sex abuse by teaching children abstinence: ‘If a stronger ‘just say no’ message was given to children in school, there might be an impact on sex abuse… if we did empower this message into girls, imbued this message in school, we would probably have less sex abuse’. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/05/18/nadine-dorries-sparks-outrage-by-claiming-that-teaching-teen-girls-to-say-no-to-sex-will-cut-abuse-115875-23137652/
My MP (Alok Sharma, Reading West) actually replied to the e-mail I sent him. It’s basically a rehash of the argument put forward by Dorries and Field, such as the idea of there being a conflict of interest even though as you say the abortion providers are best placed to give advice.
He does say, however, that he agrees that women should have the *option* of seeking independent counselling and doesn’t say whether he agrees with banning abortion providers from giving advice altogether.
However, the most interesting (and worrying) part of the letter is the bit which says ‘the government is considering the best way of delivering on this aim [of giving women the option of independent counselling], including whether an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill is necessary or whether existing laws allow us to put the policy info effect’. This suggests some kind of change could be made without any kind of law being passed and hence no debate.