Whose Choice Anyway

I knew when I decided to introduce my Abortion (Amendment) Bill that it would provoke a furious reaction. It is better to go nowhere near this issue unless you are prepared to withstand a great deal of anger and abuse. Locked into the ethical issues that abortion raises are personal feelings of bitterness, hatred and guilt some of the most powerful emotions. No wonder my political mentor and one of my oldest friends, Sir Trevor Jones, warned me about avoiding issues 'below the navel'.

What was the process that culminated in my introducing this particular Bill?

The annual ballot for Private Members' Bills usually takes place in October, when the House returns from its summer recess. In 1987 the State Opening, the Queen's Speech and the Private Members' Ballot were brought forward to late June and early July, in the immediate aftermath of Mrs Thatcher's General Election victory.

One issue which never seems to feature in a Government's legislative programme is abortion. This is traditionally a Private Members' issue - and certainly until the 1970s was regarded as a question left to individual Members of Parliament to determine on the basis of their conscience. The 1987 Queen's Speech was true to form - plenty of Bills promised on everything from Poll Tax to the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority but nothing on the protection of the embryo from experimentation and nothing on abortion. Thatcherism is justifiably seen as selfish and consumerist and abortionism fits happily into that approach to life.

Three weeks after the General Election the ballot took place. This is literally a public lottery - government by raffle. MPs who draw any of the first half dozen places have a good chance of getting enough time to see their chosen Bill debated.

That is, unless it is controversial. Then it is likely to be filibustered or wrecked by any number of procedural devices. So the advice from the Whips is to choose something with which everyone will agree - especially something with which the Government agrees. Then your Bill may become an Act. Four MPs willing to introduce pro-life Bills came up in the first 20 in 1987.

However, my three colleagues, Ken Hind, Edward Leigh and Nicholas Winterton, were too far down to have any realistic prospect of getting a Second Reading or obtaining a Committee Stage. But the impact of introducing so many pro-life initiatives was not lost on the House of Commons, and helped to build up support around my own Bill.

It was Richard Evans, a journalist with The Times, who burst into my room, then the Liberal Whip's Office, to tell me the news that I had been drawn number three in the ballot. I cannot pretend that I felt especially pleased at this news because the implications were immediately only too clear. He asked me what kind of Bill I would introduce. As he reported the following day, it was likely to be a pro-life Bill - along the lines of my 1980 Ten Minute Rule Bill which had tried to end late