The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Abortion law is outdated: Lord Steel
A controversial decision to allow women in Scotland to take abortion pills at home has been welcomed by the man who pushed for the procedure to be made legal 50 years ago.
Lord Steel, the architect of the 1967 Abortion Act, said he “very much” welcomed the move, despite claims from prolife campaigners that it marked a “return to the days of backstreet abortions”.
They hit out after Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood, wrote to health boards north of the border to say that misoprostol can be taken by women outside a clinical setting.
Campaign groups, including Engender, Amnesty Scotland and Rape Crisis Scotland, had said making women travel to clinics to take the pill “denies women clear potential advantages in terms of their wellbeing at what is often a very difficult time”.
But John Deighan, chief executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) in Scotland, said: “The reality is that this will have many vulnerable women who may be desperate about the situation they are in, pushed towards what is seen as the easy option of being handed some drugs and sent home to stop being a problem for society.”
Lord Steel told BBC Radio Scotland that the move would not mean medical abortions becoming unregulated.
Speaking on Good Morning Scotland, the former Liberal leader said: “It will still be in the care of the medical profession, just like any other medical procedure is. It is not proposed that it be unregulated.
“At the present moment, if a woman takes one of these pills from the chemist or even, as has happened, online and takes it at home, they are actually in breach of the law as it stands. That is why the law needs to be changed.”