Image: Marion McKinnon Photography
Student midwife Sara Spencer, 30, was placed on special leave and subjected to an investigation after posting her pro-life views on social media. She was undertaking a placement with NHS Fife at the time. “I do not think that NHS Fife is a safe place to work for people with protected beliefs”, she told the Mail on Sunday.
Mrs Spencer believed her career as a midwife was over in April 2024 when she was subjected to a fitness to practice investigation by Edinburgh Napier University, where she was studying.
The student was part of a Facebook group for midwives and trainees, where she replied to a question about abortion and conscientious objection. “Given that my moral beliefs include a foetus is a child and it is wrong to kill children, there is no circumstance in which I would not object to abortion”, Mrs Spencer posted.
Speaking to BBC Scotland News, Mrs Spencer said: “I was really happy to engage and present my views and kind of try to explain them.”
However, a week later, Mrs Spencer’s NHS line manager pulled her aside and told her: “These comments have been brought to my attention. I feel I need to escalate them to the university… I trust you don’t need me to tell you what comments I’m referring to. You know what you said.”
“I remember coming home and just sitting in the bathtub crying”, Mrs Spencer told the Mail on Sunday. “There was a sense that by saying my beliefs I had been bad. I broke a rule, and I was being punished for it, and it felt so isolating, so punitive.
“This was an NHS manager who got to know me for a few weeks, and then was willing to rupture my studies and career.”
Mrs Spencer was put on special leave from her placement with NHS Fife as an investigation into her fitness to practice was undertaken.
“I felt like it brought back memories of being bullied and ostracised in grammar school”, Mrs Spencer explained. “Just three months into my training I felt like I was being told you’re not welcome.”
Eventually, with support from ADF International, Mrs Spencer was cleared and allowed to study again in July 2024. She now wants assurances that no other students or staff will be subjected to the same persecution:
“I would love to see an acknowledgement that they were wrong to insist that I be investigated, wrong to bar me from placement during the investigation… I would like to know what corrective measures they’re prepared to implement.”
Speaking to conference delegates in London last year, SPUC CEO John Deighan said that he took inspiration from the midwives in the Bible who defied the Pharaoh’s orders to kill all male Hebrew babies at birth, and he encouraged delegates not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
In 2014, the UK Supreme Court ruled that two Scottish Catholic midwives, Mary Doogan and Connie Wood, had no right to object to supervising staff taking part in abortions.
“I don’t believe any midwife should be put in that position. It goes against why I went into midwifery in the first place”, Mary Doogan said in 2018. “My role was to bring life into the world. My patients were the woman and the baby. I have always felt a professional duty to both.”
After delivering 5,000 babies during her career, the Supreme Court decision forced the midwife to take early retirement. In 2018, she warned that “the issue of conscientious objection in the NHS will become even more important with things like end-of-life care. We need to tackle it now.”
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