I can’t lead midwives as well as promote abortion
Revealed: What controversial Professor thought... before her dramatic U-turn
Left-wing midwives’ chief as arrogant and unaccountable as a Seventies union boss From
Monday’s Mail I’ve done nothing wrong, insists midwives’ chief in abortion storm
Tuesday’s Mail Chief midwife in abortion row hints at a climbdown
Wednesday’s Mail
THE under-fire chief of the midwives’ union has previously admitted that the profession and abortion ‘don’t quite go together’, it emerged last night.
The candid confession from Cathy Warwick emerged as she faces a storm of protest for signing up her members to a drive to scrap abortion limits – without asking them.
And in remarks likely to further anger members of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), the chief executive set out how she seeks to ‘educate’ those who are too ‘focused’ on women having babies rather than terminations.
She also discussed current abortion law and ‘how we get round it’.
As well as her role leading Britain’s 30,000 maternity workers, Professor Warwick is chairman of the country’s biggest abortion provider, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS).
She has signed up midwives to the service’s drive to remove the 24-week legal limit for terminations – but has faced a backlash with some 750 midwives signing a ‘not in our name’ petition.
She has publicly insisted there is no conflict of interest in her two jobs, and has refused to quit. But it can be revealed that, before the current furore, she admitted having doubts about whether they were ‘compatible’. The Mail has obtained details of what she told colleagues at a family planning conference hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine last year. Professor Warwick said to delegates: ‘When I moved to be chief executive of the RCM, I thought I can’t stay involved with BPAS – midwives and abortion, [it] doesn’t quite go together. And I stopped being a member of trustees at BPAS.’ However, she said she changed her mind because choice is ‘what midwives are there for’ – and suggested that those who did not agree needed to be ‘educated’. She said: ‘Then I thought, hang on, this is all about women, about choice, that’s what midwives are there for. I got back in with BPAS and didn’t see the two as incompatible at all.’
Professor Warwick was a BPAS trustee from 2007 to 2008 – stopping when she became chief of the RCM – and then returned as a trustee in April 2010, before becoming BPAS chairman in March 2015.
She is the most radical leader of the RCM in recent history, and has been accused of trying to politicise midwives. She said there is a need to work on the ‘ attitudes’ of any midwives who were too focused on expectant mothers going through with the birth. Professor Warwick told the June 2015 conference in central London: ‘I don’t accept that you can’t educate midwives.’ Referring to those reluctant to be involved in abortion, she said: ‘In a sense midwives have removed themselves from this arena and have a focus on, “The woman is going to come out with a baby”. ‘So I think there is a need to... think about how we engage organisations like the one I represent in perhaps changing some of the attitudes and perspectives.’ Professor Warwick has sparked a mutiny among midwives by signing them up to the BPAS drive. She argues that women should be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies.
But a host of MPs and midwives have demanded she abandon the campaign. More than 20,000 members of the public have also signed the ‘not in our name’ petition.
Last night Elizabeth Perfect, 48, a midwife from London, said: ‘You can’t be a midwife unless you are highly educated. She is entitled to her opinion, but... the RCM should have consulted members over this.’
Among the flood of complaints, retired midwife Judith White, 59, from Hampshire, said: ‘If anyone should be speaking up for the unborn, it is midwives. I’m not antiabortion, but you think that little one didn’t choose to be conceived.’ Earlier this week, Labour MP Robert Flello said: ‘If I was an [RCM] board member I would be demanding to know why I was not consulted on an issue of such importance.’
During the conference, Professor Warwick talked about ‘how we get round’ current abortion law. Describing the ‘limits of the law’ – thought to refer to the fact that under the Abortion Act 1967, only doctors may perform abortions – she said it was a ‘major problem’ that lesser qualified staff could not be trained to do them.
She added: ‘I think it is about the law and how we get round it. Some might say, we can get round it by things like the doctor running round signing all the blue forms [believed to mean the authorisa- tion forms], but you could argue it is not particularly safe.’
Peter Williams, of Right to Life, said: ‘ What Cathy Warwick describes is what the rest of still think – abortion and midwives don’t go together. Abortion contradicts everything that midwifery is meant to be about.’
On her suggestion of ‘getting round’ the law, Mr Williams added: ‘Cathy Warwick appears to be saying that medical professionals might disregard the law. She is describing, and seems sympathetic to, “presigning”, which is illegal.
‘This warrants not merely resignation on her part, but a review into the extent this activity takes place.’
Last night a spokesman for the RCM said: ‘No comment.’