On the 25th February, the Welsh Government announced that the temporary provisions allowing DIY abortion during the pandemic were to be made permanent.
Eluned Morgan, Minister for Health and Social Services made the announcement, during recess, on the evening of the day that the Westminster Government decided that the scheme would be scrapped in England from August.
As well as making a different decision to England, Wales has also diverged by not making the full results of the public consultation available. When SPUC asked the Health Department for the results of the consultation, we were told “you’ll have to FOI that”. Our freedom of information request has not, at the time of writing, been acknowledged. If the consultation results are anything like those in England and Scotland, they overwhelmingly oppose making this dangerous and reckless policy permanent.
We must fight back against this deadly decision. There are four possible actions you can take to make your voice heard.
- Write to your MSs
Please write to your Senedd Members. You are represented in the Senedd by five Members (MSs) - one for your local area and four for the region of Wales you live in. Please write to one or all of your MSs, expressing your outrage that DIY abortion has been made permanent, and demanding that this decision be reversed. You can talk about the dangers of the policy, and that the decision was made with no parliamentary scrutiny, and while suppressing the results of the public consultation. You can use some points from this briefing.
- Submit an FOI
The Welsh Government clearly does not want the results of the public consultation to be made public. To put pressure on them to publish the full results, we need lots of supporters to submit freedom of information requests. You can find the form to request information here. Make a request for the full, numerical results of the consultation, and send it to: Freedomofinformation@gov.wales.
- Write to the local press
Another action you can take is to write to your local newspapers. People need to be made aware that this dangerous policy has been made permanent with no parliamentary scrutiny. It is also shocking that the results of the public consultation have not been released in full. You can use some points from the briefing above.
- Sign and share our petition
In response to the Welsh Government’s decision, we have launched a joint petition with CitizenGo, calling on First Minister Mark Drakeford and Health Minister Eluned Morgan to reverse the deadly DIY abortion decision in Wales. Please go to https://citizengo.org/en-gb/206592-reverse-deadly-diy-abortion-decision-wales to sign this petition, and then share it with others.