The Department of Health and Social Care announced today that Dame Lesley Regan has been appointed as Women's Health Ambassador.

SPUC is alarmed at the appointment of Dame Lesley, the former head of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, as she has promoted abortion decriminalisation, home abortion, and has compared abortion to “getting your bunions done”.

The new role of Women’s Health Ambassador is to support the implementation of the upcoming women’s health strategy for England, the Department says. The “vision” for the strategy lists “abortion care” as one of women’s “reproductive health needs”.

Who is Dame Lesley Regan?

Lesley Regan is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Imperial College London St Mary’s Hospital Campus, and was President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) from 2016 to 2019. She is also listed as a trustee of BPAS, the abortion provider.

In 2017, Prof Regan called for abortion to be decriminalised and made more freely available. She also called for the rule that two doctors must sign for an abortion to be scrapped.

“At the moment it’s illegal, it’s a crime, and it’s the only medical procedure which requires two doctors’ signatures”, she said.

“It would be perfectly reasonable to have one doctor to sign consent like anything else. If you go and get your bunions sorted… you would go to a consultation… then you take a decision and the doctor who was competent to undertake the procedure would sign the form too, and that would go forward.”

Secret vote and pro-abortion bias

A week after causing outrage with her bunion comments, doctors protested the decision by Prof Regan to hold a secret vote on abortion decriminalisation at the RCOG.

Over 600 doctors signed an open letter to Prof Regan, protesting her announcement on holding a vote of the General Council on supporting removing all restrictions on abortion. The RCOG represents 6,000 senior doctors in England specialising in childbirth and women’s health, but only 33 members of the body’s council took part in the behind-closed-doors ballot.

The Council voted to back decriminalisation in September 2017.

Prof Regan has also backed home abortions in 2017, several years before they were initially introduced as a temporary measure during Covid. After the policy was introduced, she co-authored an article arguing that telemedicine abortion should be the norm.

“A clear conflict of interest”

Alithea Williams, SPUC’s Public Policy Manager, said: “It is alarming that someone with such extreme views on abortion should have been given this significant role. Although abortion is apparently only a small part of the Women’s Health Strategy, given Prof Regan’s past advocacy in this area, SPUC is very concerned about what she might do in this post.

“It is also troubling that she is still listed as a trustee of BPAS – why is the trustee of a group that lobbies for extreme changes in abortion law being given an official Government position? It seems a clear conflict of interest.

“We would also question whether someone who compares abortion – a life-ending procedure that many women grieve for years – to having bunions sorted should be in a role that requires sensitivity and appreciation of women’s needs.”