The moment I saw an aborted foetus gasping for breath scarred me for life.
Extending ‘pills by post’ abortion right up to birth would be a terrible mistake
WHEN I was a young nurse of 18, I experienced something that changed me profoundly. My months on the gynaecological ward had been the happiest and most rewarding of my short career — until one day, when I was asked to help during the termination of a pregnancy at 27 weeks.
Back then, the legal limit for abortion was 28 weeks. This was reduced to 24 in 1990.
The expectant mother, who was only 16, had been injected in her uterine cavity with the hormone prostaglandin. Several excruciating hours later, the foetus — a little boy — was delivered.
He was dropped in a bedpan and the ward sister handed him to me, saying: ‘Take this into the sluice room and leave it there until I come. Stay with it.’
As I closed the sluice-room door, I removed the paper covering from the bedpan. I have never forgotten what I saw. There lay a tiny baby boy, blinking, covered in mucus, blood and amniotic fluid, gasping for breath, his little arms and legs twitching.
I was shocked to my core. Weeping, I rocked the bedpan in my arms. I wanted to pick him up but he was so small, I didn’t know how to. After a minute or so, I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I was about to run for help when I heard the ward sister’s unmistakable footsteps approaching.
As she took the bedpan from me, he stopped breathing. I checked my fob watch: a little boy had been born, lived and died in the space of seven minutes. Mine was the only face he saw, my sobs the only sounds he heard.
Distressed, I turned to the ward sister and said: ‘He was breathing.’ Through her dark-rimmed glasses she glared at me, saying: ‘No he wasn’t. You didn’t see that.’ I was stunned. He was breathing, I insisted.
She looked embarrassed and muttered: ‘The mother probably got her dates wrong. Maybe she was more than 27 weeks.’
At this, I was almost inconsolable. I had become a nurse to help people — not to facilitate killing babies who might have lived. The sister snapped: ‘If you want to be a nurse, you had better toughen up fast. Get out.’ I ran from the sluice room. I can’t bring myself to tell you how she disposed of the body of that tiny newborn.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve always believed in safe, legal abortion. When you criminalise the procedure, you don’t stop it from happening, you merely push desperate women into dangerous backstreet clinics.
But ever since that horrendous experience, I’ve appreciated what a complicated and emotionally fraught issue this is.
Which brings me to important events taking place in the Commons this month. Two Labour MPs — Dame Diana Johnson and Stella Creasy — have tabled amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill making its way through Parliament. Their aim is to legalise abortion — until the very point of birth — for women using the ‘pills by post’ method at home.
Doctors working in clinics still have to abide by the 24-week legal limit. But, increasingly, that’s almost a side issue: ‘abortifacient’ pills ordered online and taken at home now account for 87 per cent of terminations in Britain — up 40 per cent since 2011.
Until the pandemic, a woman seeking a termination had to attend a clinic and undergo an ultrasound to confirm how far along she was. She would then take the first pill under supervision in the clinic, and the second pill at home, where the foetus would be delivered.
I was a health minister during the pandemic, and was involved in intense discussions about the ethics and legality of ‘pills by post’. We didn’t want expectant mothers to become lawbreakers in their own homes, and we were depending on women to tell the truth about when they’d become pregnant: not just for the sake of their foetus, but for their own physical and mental safety as well.
Matt Hancock was Health Secretary during Covid. He gave me his absolute assurance pills by post would be temporary, and that, after the pandemic, we would revert to the safer method.
But in June 2021, he resigned in disgrace for breaking his own strict lockdown rules with his married mistress, Gina Coladangelo.
Sajid Javid took Matt’s place as Secretary of State, and the man who called himself ‘The Saj’ capitulated to pressure from hardline pro- choicers and feminists, making this deeply unsatisfactory arrangement permanent.
I warned at the time that women would be prosecuted for ordering pills by post when their pregnancies were too advanced to qualify for them. And so it has come to pass.
In May 2020, Carla Foster, who was in a vulnerable situation, obtained the pills at home while eight months pregnant. Last year, she received a 28-month prison sentence, reduced to 14 months suspended on appeal.
Predictably, there has been a surge in similar investigations — and not only of women who have lied about how far along they were, but also of women who have suffered miscarriages at home and found themselves subjected to harsh and intrusive questioning.
Between 1967 — when the Abortion Act first legalised the procedure — and 2022, only three women were prosecuted for lateterm abortions. In less than two years, there have been at least six such prosecutions.
The 46-year- old Stella Creasy insists that abortion is a ‘human right’ and a ‘ medical matter’. (There is no ‘right to life’ for the unborn as far as these people are concerned.)
No doubt she and her Labour colleague Dame Diana believe their case has been strengthened by the recent rise in prosecutions. But the truth is that they and other feminists have helped to create the very problem they now seek to repair.
As I’ve said, I’m pro-choice. I’ve always believed in making it as easy as reasonably possible for women under 12 weeks pregnant to secure terminations. It remains a nonsense that two doctors’ signatures are required at that early stage. The easier we make early-term abortions, the less traumatic the procedures are for pregnant women.
In both 2008 and 2012, as a backbench MP, I secured debates
I was distressed and almost inconsolable
Some women face intrusive questioning
There is a risk for those who are vulnerable
in Westminster to reduce the legal limit for abortions from 24 weeks to 20.
I failed — even though babies have been born at 23 weeks or even less, and gone on to survive and thrive.
So while no one relishes seeing desperate and vulnerable women being prosecuted for undergoing procedures they felt they had no choice about, the rights of the unborn have to be balanced against those of the living.
The original rules were brought in for good reason — and they protect would-be mothers as much as babies.
In sending the message to women that abortion is fine until birth, Creasy and Johnson’s amendments risk placing vulnerable women in life threatening situations: encouraging them to end lateterm pregnancies at home in the absence of proper care.
And even if a late-term foetus is ‘safely’ aborted, the psychological scarring can be acute — as I know from my experience all those years ago.
My hope in defeating this rests with Miriam Cates. She’s one of the few Tory MPs who does her actual job and isn’t constantly vying to be Prime Minister. She is a mother of three, a woman of faith and principle.
Miriam has vowed to rally MPs to vote down the entire Criminal Justice Bill if it comes back to Westminster with the decriminalisation amendments attached.
Let’s hope, on behalf of women and unborn babies everywhere, she is successful.