LEGAL REFORM PROPOSALS TO LEGALISE ABORTION STIR BRITAIN

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 12

LEGAL REFORM PROPOSALS TO LEGALISE ABORTION STIR BRITAIN

<Bu ADRIAN McGREGOR, writing to the "Sydney Morning Herald” from London! (Reprinted from the "Sydney Morning Herald" by arrangement)

The controversial Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill, now in its crucial committee stages in the British House of Commons, was introduced quietly and at first excited little public feeling.

Although the bill had its dissidents, until recently all opposition was falling before the well-organised, well-established and highly respected , , ~! , o n Re* o , l ™ Association, to the extent that at its second reading the bill was passed by 223 votes to 29.

Organised medical opinion has been slow to mobilise but as the bill went to the committee, the hastily assembled Society for the Protection of Uhborn Children entered the lists, and the British Medical Association ana the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists introduced their formidable opposition.

The issues of a more liberal abortion law are so complex that many M.P.s have welcomed outside opposition to help provide a more balanced understanding of a problem intimately affecting human happiness. However, with its entry into the fray, the Protection Society has brought the highly emotive argument that a foetus can feel pain, and further, extremists are now propounding that abortion is “legalised murder,” thus creating an electric atmosphere between the two pressure groups. Private Member’s Bill At the centre of the controversy, Mr David Steel, the brilliant 28-year-old Scottish Liberal M.P., who Is presenting the bill as a private member, has been fighting to prevent dramatisation of a problem about which many people still feel in conflict. The law at present is based on the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861, which imposed life imprisonment for any “unlawful attempts to procure a miscarriage.” Through Criminal Court interpretation this has been modified until today a pregnancy may be terminated if a registered medical practitioner believes that the woman's health—physical or mental—will be seriously affected by continuing the pregnancy. It is a law which is broken, whether comfortably, safely, and expensively via Harley Street, or squalidly, cheaply and often fatally in back streets, hundreds of times a day throughout Britain. The figure has been put at 100,000 illegal abortions a year. Mr David Steel’s bill would permit a doctor to end a pregnancy in the following cases: (a) If the mother’s life or health is likely to be endangered by the birth of a child. (b) If there is a likelihood of the baby being deformed. (c) If the woman’s capacity as a mother will be severely overstrained by the care of a child or another child. (d) If the mother has been a victim of rape, is defective or has be-

come pregnant under the age of 16.

The Reform Association was formed in 1936 to persuade Parliament to amend the

law and today ft has among its 5000 members many eminent doctors, lawyers, gynaecologists, forensic scientists, Queen’s Counsel, psychiatrists and philosophers. On several occasions in the past the association has been defeated after managing to get a bill before Parliament, but the thalidomide tragedies have weighed heavily on many consciences and the present bill has been read twice, though 35 amendments have been tabled against it for final debate. Foetus Sensitive Although it is not central to their argument, those who oppose the reformers have achieved widespread publicity through the claim by Professor James Scott, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Leeds University, that the foetus is sensitive to pain. His own experience of intra-uterine surgery to correct Rhesus conditions, he said, had given

him pictures on an X-ray screen of “babies writhing and struggling to get off the needle.” He had noted this in a foetus only 10 weeks old.

Most therapeutic abortions take place at up to 12 weeks. A Cambridge embryologist, Dr. D. H. M. Woollam, replied that he did not believe that pain as we knew it was felt by the foetus, but it would be difficult to prove. He added, “1 couldn’t prove that a lettuce doesn’t feel.” Two doctors, Professor lan Donald, Regius Professor of Midwifery at Glasgow University, and Sir Hector MacLennan, former president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, shocked about 100 M.P.s last week with a film showing in graphic and often shocking detail birth and abortion, because they believed “members did not know what they were voting for.” Of abortion Professor Donald said, “Most gynaecologists have a built-in resistance to doing this sort of thing.” The 8.M.A., the R.C.0.G., and the Protection Society all broadly believe that Clause A of the bill would suffice, with the stipulations that only National Health Service doctors be permitted to operate and that a consultant gynaecologist or surgeon be required to second a medical practitioner’s view that the operation is necessary, two points not written into the bill. Social Factors The Protection Society’s case revolves around the arguments that in few cases can doctors diagnose abnormalities in the unborn with any certainty, that preventive medicine is being continually advanced for both mother and child and that in some countries with liberal abortion laws the incidence of back-street abortion has actually increased. They also claim that under the new laws, doctors would be required to make a decision on non-medical grounds for which they have no specialist training.

This last is the vital issue, since many of the bill’s opponents claim that Clauses C and D would create “abortion on demand” for social reasons, on which Lord Brock, past president of the Royal College of Surgeons, says, “It is not an acceptable medical code to perform an operation on non-medical grounds." However, Professor Erwin Stengel, president of the Royal Medico - Psychological Association. replies, “We strongly disagree with those who contend that it is not the place of medical men to take social factors into account.”

The Queen's SurgeonGynaecologist, Sir John Peel, who is president of the R.C.0.G., said that Clauses C and D were open to "very gross abuse” since the woman’s capacity to be a mother could be interpreted in any way one liked.

W.H.O’s Definition

Mr Steel points out that British medicine is committed to the World Health Organisation’s definition of health, which specifically says “a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being.” To say that the law might be abused, he said, was to use the same ill-founded argument that was used against the National Health Scheme and the modern availability of contraceptives. The Reform Association says that while it seeks to liberalise the laws it is also aiming to clarify them and remove as much variation in their interpretation as possible.

Of the horrifying aspects of abortion as revealed by Dr. Donald, the Reform Association agrees that it is an awful

task, but says that while most doctors feel abortion is necessary now in some cases, the association believes there are many more cases in which it can be justified.

To support their argument that it need not be a matter of life and death for abortion to take place, the Reform Association has issued a pamphlet containing 50 of the thousands of letters it has received, each describing harrowing tales of unwanted pregnancy, and pleading for help. Most Women Married

Smashed homes, appalling living conditions, adopted babies, mental torment and physical misery are the tales of these women, who, contrary to common opinion, are more likely to be married than not. Nearly all echo the anguished cry, "No-one can force me to have this baby.” In “Law For The Rich” (a title chosen after the author overheard at a cocktail party

a Harley street consultant say ho had “arranged a termination” for his wife expecting their fourth and unwanted child), Mrs Alice Jenkins, one of the association’s founders, describes her vain attempts to find help for a young couple with two children, living in deplorable conditions, and expecting another child. The woman finally died of septicaemia after a back-street abortion.

Mrs Janet Chance, another founder member, has written, “such women do not enjoy abortions, they clutch at them in despair.” in Aberdeen a more liberal approach to abortion has already produced the conditions the new laws would create. There have been 772 abortions there in the past five years and the city’s backstreet aborters now seem to have disappeared. The Roman Catholic attitude to the bill, predictably, outlaws it.

The Church of England defines the mother's health in Clause A as being integrally connected with the life and well-being of her family, thus the Archbishop of Canterbury has declared that Clauses B, C and D, should be dealt with under Clause A, returning the burden of interpretation to the individual beliefs of members of the medical profession. The Bill’s Prospects How will the bill go? The 30-man committee considering it has a large majority in favour of the bill, in roughly the same proportion as the bill was passed at its second reading, about six to one.

The effects of the intervention by the Protection Society and the medical bodies will not be known until early in March when the committee will report and the House will vote again. The Government is broadly in favour, but Mr Steel and his seven co-proposers can expect torrid debates in the House of Commons where the bill’s reformers have foundered in the past Whether they manage to retain the bill in its present strength is one question, but it appears certain that an archaic law is to be at. last amended.

Moves to legalise abortion in Brktain have resulted In one of the most bitter and emotional social struggles of the century. In this article from London. Adrian McGregor discusses the issues, for and again*.