Nurses ‘to of all time
THE Royal College of Nursing is poised to back a controversial feminist campaign calling for all time limits on abortion to be axed.
The powerful body is set to announce a new policy after consulting its 435,000 members on ‘decriminalising’ terminations – sparking a mutiny from antiabortion nurses.
More than 370 RCN rebels have rejected the incendiary proposal, declaring: ‘Not in our name’.
But if – as expected – the RCN backs the axeing of time limits, it will join the Royal College of Midwives, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and British Medical Association in doing so.
They have thrown their weight behind the radical We Trust Women campaign – organised by Britain’s biggest termination provider, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service – which is calling for all laws protecting the unborn child from abortion to be scrapped.
That would mean removing strict legislation preventing abortions after 24 weeks for anything but the most serious medical reasons.
The laws on abortion in Scotland remain the same as in England and Wales, even though the issue was devolved to the Scottish parliament in 2016. Any changes in the limit south of the Border would not automatically apply in Scotland.
Today, The Mail on Sunday can reveal a key RCN adviser behind the college’s expected move is also a senior executive at BPAS who holds strident pro-abortion views.
Mandy Myers, who has helped guide RCN abortion policy for at least a decade, is director of operations at BPAS, where she is responsible for providing abortions for more than 73,000 women a year – earning the charity almost £30 million in taxpayers’ money.
She is a leading member of the college’s Women’s Health Forum, which she joined ‘to get more involved in driving the agenda in women’s health at the RCN’.
She has been good to her word. In 2016, she initiated a debate at the RCN’s annual conference on ‘the merits of decriminalising abortion’, arguing the current law was ‘patronising’ to women. The matter was subsequently taken up by the college’s executive council, which last December highlighted ‘work on the