Whose Choice Anyway

I The Players (continued) ... And Her Doctor Abortion has been offered to women as a universal remedy. It actually solves no problems: just ends lives. We have all been deceived by smooth talking medics who have willingly prescribed abortions and played down the consequences. One pro-abortion gynaecologist actually said in a Sunday newspaper that an abortion is just like having a dose of penicillin.

It is quite remarkable how much medical ethics have changed in the past 20 years.

The Hippocratic Oath and its commitment to defend life seems to mean little to many doctors today. The hierarchy of the British Medical Association - fierce opponents of David Steel's Bill - are twenty years later the stoutest defenders of abortion. I suppose that to be otherwise would be an admission of some degree of responsibility for what has happened. To be otherwise would be an admission of the profession's abject failure to protect both of the patients involved in an abortion.

During 1987 an unmarried woman consulted her doctor. After confirming her pregnancy, the doctor offered her an abortion on social grounds. The woman declined. The pregnancy continued well but it was discovered that the father of the child was affected by a rare genetic condition. The mother was referred to a consultant at the nearby Carlisle General Hospital. He told her that the child would be born severely handicapped. What he did not tell her was that the condition, Ehlers Danlos syndrome, is, in reality, so minor that many affected are not even aware of it. In fact, it is impossible to tell whether or not the unborn baby suffers from the condition. There is a 50% chance that the child will be affected, and the 1967 Act allows abortion on the suspicion of disability. The consultant advised an abortion and late in the pregnancy at an estimated 21 weeks, the abortion was begun.

This was a National Health Service Hospital and therefore the emphasis, unlike the situation in a private clinic, was not on production-line speed. This partly affects the choice of method used for the abortion. Instead of dilatation and evacuation (D & E), the woman was aborted using prostaglandins. Such drugs are usually used in conjunction with a poison such as urea, but in this case the poison was not used