THE BABIES I LOST AND WHY LATE-STAGE ABORTION IS SO WRONG

WHAT the blazes has got into the Royal College of Midwives? I ask because, to the horror of many of its wonderful members, its chief executive, Cathy Warwick, wants to scrap the time limit on abortion — a move that would pave the way for terminations of fully developed unborn babies.

It would be lovely not to get personal about this, but I can’t help thinking that Professor Warwick has taken leave of her senses.

My perspective is shaped by personal experience. I speak as a woman who has had no fewer than seven pregnancies, only three of which resulted in what the medical profession calls ‘live births’.

Today I am lucky enough to have three beautiful young children, but the heartache of losing multiple pregnancies through miscarriage transformed the way I view the unborn child — from the very first magical flickers of life in the womb, to the remarkable alien-like creatures of five or six months’ gestation that evolve ever more recognisably into tiny humans.

The thought of deliberately killing a healthy unborn child at this stage makes me feel sick.

I didn’t always see it this way. When the subject of abortion came up during my student years, I would blithely declare that, should I be unfortunate enough to find myself saddled with an unwanted pregnancy, I would have no compunction in hotfooting it to the nearest Marie Stopes clinic.

I remember the exact words I used: early pregnancies were ‘just a bunch of cells’.

The life-changing experience a decade later of watching a ‘bunch of cells’ slowly but surely evolve into a little boy — my son — and the dark despair I felt in the years that followed when four of my subsequent pregnancies failed, gave me a remarkable new appreciation for what many people of religious faith call the ‘sanctity of life’.

I realised that a foetus, however tiny, is a person-to-be.

As it stands, the law in this country allows abortion until the 24th week of pregnancy, unless there are exceptional medical grounds for a later termination.

That is already far more lax than in many other parts of the EU, where the law varies but the limit is generally around 12 weeks’ gestation. In the UK, the cut-off point is based on the so-called ‘viability’ of the foetus, meaning its prospect of survival outside the womb.

As neonatal care has advanced, dramatically improving survival rates among premature babies, this limit has been the subject of impassioned debate.

It is no longer unusual for babies born towards the end of the second trimester (which ends at 27 weeks’ gestation) to survive. Indeed, a handful born as early as 22 weeks have clung on to life.

It’s worth pointing out that the available statistics only tell some of the story, as they are based on very sick babies who make it to specialist neonatal units in time.

We have no way of knowing the potential outcomes of aborted healthy babies.

CALLS for a reduction in the legal limit for abortion have been led, most recently, by the Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, who introduced a Private Members’ Bill in the Commons in 2006, calling for a reduction in the legal time limit for abortion to 20 weeks.

She has described how, as a young nurse, she watched an aborted baby lying in a bedpan struggling to breathe. After that she vowed to try to alter the barbaric practice of late terminations.

During her campaign in 2006, she highlighted the ugly truth about how late abortions are carried out.

It involves dismembering the foetus bit by bit inside the uterus before it is pulled out. Surgical forceps are used to crush the skull, spine and pelvis so that they are small enough to come out.

To avoid botched jobs, like the one Ms Dorries witnessed, a lethal injection is first placed into the baby’s heart through the mother’s abdominal wall.

How much the foetus itself suffers is a matter of debate.

Following a shocking 1984 film called The Silent Scream, which purported to show the ultrasound image of a foetus being aborted, its mouth apparently wide open in agony, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists commissioned a panel of experts to examine the question.

They concluded that unborn babies cannot feel pain until 26 weeks’ gestation — safely beyond the current abortion time limit. That they may suffer terribly after this point cuts no ice with Professor Warwick.

What she is suggesting is a total free-for-all, based on the notion that women can be trusted to make their own reproductive choices.

She seeks to sanitise a proposal with grotesque practical implications for the medical profession, and terrible potential physical and emotional consequences for mothers-to-be, in the politically correct language of ‘respecting women’s rights’ over their bodies.

Amid the mounting outcry over her proposal, it is worth considering what role midwives are supposed to represent.

The word ‘midwife’ literally means ‘with woman’.

Almost all these amazing, dedicated professionals see their job as helping mothers-to-be bring new life into the world. To this end, they work long, exhausting shifts on understaffed hospital wards for mediocre rates of pay.

Even those who have been in the business for decades stick with it, despite diminishing NHS resources progressively undermining the quality of care they can provide.

This is because they share the joy and wonder of the new parent as a newborn baby takes its first breath.

Does Professor Warwick propose that her members should also fulfil their calling to be ‘with women’ undergoing late terminations? And are they to apply the same standards of care to mother and child?

Rightly, midwives observe rituals for stillborn babies, whose bodies are treated with the utmost sensitivity and respect. Precious foot and handprints made; photographs taken; funerals arranged.

What does Professor Warwick propose her members do with the bodies of unwanted babies terminated in late pregnancy? Are they simply to be tossed into a bin marked ‘hospital waste’ and sent off to the incinerator?

FURTHERMORE, who is going to carry out the grisly medical procedures? The majority of doctors are deeply reluctant to perform late abortions, even when the unborn baby is profoundly sick, deformed, or suffering from a lifelimiting condition.

While medics in one part of a hospital battle valiantly to save the life of a much wanted premature baby, does Professor Warwick propose that surgeons on the other side of a curtain scrub up to end the life of a baby at a later stage of gestation, which is perfectly healthy but deemed surplus to requirements?

Will the poor, vulnerable women Professor Warwick wants to bestow with the ‘right’ to end a late pregnancy recuperate from their operations on maternity wards, alongside happy new mothers, or are hospitals to have dedicated foeticide units?

Becoming a mother would probably have been enough to change my views on abortion.

The dreadful experience of desperately willing a series of tiny unborn babies to cling onto life inside me meant I could never again take that ‘bunch of cells’ for granted.

The fate of each of my new pregnancies would be revealed via periodic ultrasound scans, starting just a few weeks after conception, when it becomes possible to detect a heartbeat.

Lying in the sonographers’ room, hoping against hope that he or she would find that tiny sign of life, I would wait for the verdict: life or death.

Eventually, after four devastating losses I got the news I so longed to hear: this one’s going to make it.

Happily there is no prospect of anyone in Westminster taking up Professor Warwick’s call for a change in the law.

As Mrs Dorries discovered to her cost, it is a brave politician who wades into the debate. For taking a principled, heartfelt stance, she was vilified by ‘pro-choicers’.

Meanwhile, many members of the Royal College of Midwives are dissociating themselves from their chief executive.

To my mind, the next termination on the agenda should be that of her own contract.