Yesterday, MPs voted by 215 votes to 188 in favour of an amendment to the Health and Care Bill that will make DIY abortion permanent.

The amendment was approved despite strong speeches by MPs pointing out the many dangers of the scheme.

Children sent abortion drugs

In particular, horrific details emerged during the debate of children being sent abortion drugs in the post. Carla Lockhart MP quoted a story reported in the BBC about 16 year old Savannah, who took abortion drugs thinking she was less than 8 weeks pregnant. She was left traumatised after giving birth to a 20-week baby with a heartbeat.

Ms Lockhart went on:

Savannah’s story should make us all pause and consider what this policy actually means. Perhaps it would be different if her story was an anomaly, but it is not. Tragically, delivery of near-viable or viable infants from a failed medical abortion is more common than abortion advocates would care to admit. Early on in the pandemic, just weeks after this policy was approved, a leaked “urgent” email sent by an NHS regional chief midwife quoted the “escalating risk” around at-home abortions and cited

“the delivery of infants up to 30 weeks gestation.”

Similar reports have been made by the body that comprises all senior NHS doctors and nurses who fulfil statutory child safeguarding functions in the NHS, the National Network of Designated Health Care Professionals for Children. Specifically, it has recorded 47 cases of early medical abortions that resulted in mid-to-late pregnancy terminations, across all ages, since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Six involved girls and in half those cases, and 12 instances in total, there had been signs of life.

Dr Caroline Johnson MP, who made a very insightful contribution from her perspective as a medical professional, also mentioned the NNDHP report. “One can only imagine the distress felt by these women and children when they take an abortion pill to deliver what they believe to be a foetus of less than 10 weeks and out comes a baby of up to 30 weeks’ gestation who may at that point have been alive,” she said.

Dr Johnson also brought up the problem of coercion, saying that this is very difficult for a woman who is being abused or trafficked to talk about it over the phone. She said: “It is true that if the woman receives the abortion by post, the problem of her being pregnant is solved, but the problem of her being abused is not.”

However, pro-abortion MPs dismissed these dangers. Jess Phillips ignored the experience of women who are coerced into abortion, saying: “I go back to this idea: ‘If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. No one’s forcing you.’ This is exactly the same. No one is forcing anybody to take through the procedure at home.”

Hardened hearts

Alithea Williams, SPUC’s Public Policy Manager, said: “It is all the more shocking that MPs heard these horrific stories, and still voted to keep this policy. How hard must their hearts be not to care about underage girls going through unintentional late term abortions? And to dismiss the abundant evidence of abortion coercion?

We need to make the general public aware of all these facts and stories, so that politicians are held to account for this deadly decision.”