A new generation of doctors will be put off from becoming involved in abortion services by high-profile protest campaigns and a political “witch-hunt”, providers fear.

The current climate is already causing anxiety among doctors who are concerned that their practice will be called into question, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) said, as activists behind a new campaign to demonstrate outside abortion clinics were joined at one protest in London by a Catholic bishop.

The warning comes as the BPAS and pro-choice campaigners say they feel “under siege” after the government ordered an unannounced inspection of more than 250 clinics in England, claiming as many as a fifth were pre-signing consent forms for terminations. The inspections by officials from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) were said to have found evidence of blank forms being signed in anticipation of women seeking a termination. Although doctors do not have to see the woman in person, they must certify that they are aware of her circumstances and why she wants to go ahead with the procedure.

A spokesperson for the BPAS said: “Abortion is a vital yet stigmatised area of women’s healthcare which few doctors train in. The current politicisation of abortion provision is likely to make it even harder to recruit a future generation of abortion doctors who are prepared to provide the care that a third of women will need in the course of their lifetimes.”

Sorry folks but the legality of abortion does not over ride everyones’, or even anyones’, ability to approve of, tolerate or disapprove of those who have them or those who perform them.

Just as the legality of adultery leaves us all with our own opinions of swingers’ parties and even the people who organise them.

My suspicion is that this whining is more related to the opt out available to medical students than anything else. With an increasing fraction of the medical profession being Moslem (and the theological Moslem objection to abortion is roughly the same as the Catholic one) there are stories that such opts outs, the refusal to even consider training to take part, is rising. Which could indeed lead to a “problem”, that abortion is legal but that there aren’t many people willing to actually perform one.

I really wouldn’t be surprised at all if this was the start of a campaign to remove that opt out.

Andrew Lansley is playing politics with abortion provision

Err, yes.

The man’s an elected politician and abortion is part of his ministerial brief.

Wat do you expect him to do with the subject other than play politics with it?

Hockey?

No doubt it’s a serious matter that some abortion clinics are said to be flouting the law and getting consent forms pre-signed by doctors. Well, technically anyway. It’s the law that’s wrong, of course. It pretends there has to be some sort of medical reason why a woman would want an abortion, a medical reason that not one but two doctors have to recognise as causing a threat to the woman seeking to end her pregnancy. In reality, in the vast majority of cases, the procedure is medical but the decision is personal – social or economic. Often, a woman’s bank manager is in a better position to confirm she would benefit from a termination than is a doctor she’s never met. Often, the father of the child is. Yet, it’s perfectly clear that a demand for such clearance would be a sinister attack on an adult woman’s right to make her own choices about her life. Everyone knows that the whole two-doctors deal is an absurd formality – a giant, insulting nod to those who don’t “believe in” abortion at all. This is a procedural sop that panders only to them. Their determination to use it as a stick to beat abortion providers with is simply one more reason why this paternalistic and meaningless little bureaucratic hoop needs to be terminated forthwith.

There’s a problem with it though.

The usual revelation: yes, I know that my views on abortion are very much out of the mainstream.

However, I really do not believe that everyone but me (for liberal reasons) and a few others (for religious reasons) really does believe that abortion on demand for economic or social reasons is in fact the clear and obviously correct position to take.

I agree that there’s at least a substantial minority who do: but I’m unconvinced that it’s even a majority who do.

Indeed, that’s exactly why the various Abortion Acts over the years have been written in the way they have. Because even those politicos who do believe in the entirely unfettered right to scoop out and dump don’t believe that everyone else believes this. Which is why they’ve clouded it with medical reasons so as to gain that majority support.

I cannot prove this but I do have a feeling that if the law really reflected “what everyone believes” (or perhaps the average of what all believe) then we’d have a system that, roughly, allowed on demand abortion up to 8 or 10 weeks, something like that, much much stricter controls than we currently have on 10-22 weeks.

But as I say, the very fact that the law is currently bound up in these “medical” reasons seems to me proof that even ardent advocates don’t think that the rest of the country entirely agrees with their position.

BPAS chief executive Ann Furedi said she was appalled that the media had been told about the latest inspections before the clinics.

She said: “Abortion doctors provide an important service to women who are often in difficult circumstances.

“Their work is already intensely scrutinised, with clinics regularly inspected by the Care Quality Commission.

“Mr Lansley says he is shocked and appalled by the practices he has uncovered.

“BPAS is shocked and appalled that Mr Lansley has found it necessary to inform journalists of alleged breaches of the abortion law before he has informed those responsible for providing the services that have been investigated, and before the investigation is concluded.”

Quite, how appalling that the hoi polloi might be informed that people are breaking the law as they kill people.

Come along now, we all know what we’re really doing here, running a production line operation to hoick the little ‘uns out, but really, telling the truth about such matters really isn’t on. Why, if told the details some might even oppose what is going on and we can’t have that, can we?

“I completely understand the law doesn’t require the doctor to have met the woman concerned, but to pre-sign certificates when you don’t even know which woman it relates to and there hasn’t been an assessment, is completely contrary to the spirit and letter of the law.”

He added that action would be taken within days. “We’re dealing with all this quickly,” Mr Lansley said. “If there is evidence of an offence we will give it directly to the police.”

The Health Secretary said pre-signing forms “constitutes a criminal offence” and could also lead to doctors being struck off by the General Medical Council.

Mr Lansley warned that so-called abortion on demand was not acceptable. “It’s not what Parliament intended and it’s not what the law provides for,” he said. “My job is to enforce the law.”

We do not, in the legal sense, have abortion on demand. We do, in the practical sense, have abortion on demand. No woman under 20 weeks pregnant is going to be unable to get an abortion (outside NI of course) if that’s what she wishes.

So those campaigners who get outraged about the breach of either the letter or spirit of the law on other matters are going to get similarly outraged about this.

Yes?

The answer goes back to the fundamental disagreement between pro- and anti-choicers on what men back in the day called “the Woman Question”: that is, “What are women for?” Sadly, as recently as 2012, conservative commentator James Poulos insisted on framing the question of women’s rights in just this way, saying if we could just get to the mystery of what women are “for”, then we’ll know how many rights they should be allowed to have.

For pro-choicers, the answer to this question is obvious: women aren’t “for” anything, and the question itself dehumanizes women, positioning them as objects to be used instead of people in their own right. Like men, we’re not the means to the end, but the end. Thus, we conclude, women have a right to self-determination.

We can rewrite the paragraph thus:

The answer goes back to the fundamental disagreement between pro- and anti-choicers on what men back in the day called “the Foetus Question”: that is, “What are foetii for?” Sadly, as recently as 2012, someone insisted on framing the question of foetus’s rights in just this way, saying if we could just get to the mystery of what foetii are “for”, then we’ll know how many rights they should be allowed to have.

For pro-lifers, the answer to this question is obvious: foetii aren’t “for” anything, and the question itself dehumanizes the foetus, positioning them as objects to be used instead of people in their own right. Like men, they’re not the means to the end, but the end. Thus, we conclude, foetii have a right to life.

As ever on this subject I don’t expect many to agree with me. I wouldn’t insist that I agree with the above statement myself. Indeed, I can think of ways of making holes in that argument myself.

My point is only that the logic being advanced just isn’t the slam dunk that the person advancing it seems to think it is.

The argument for and or against abortion rests on one fundamental point, as it always has done and as it always will. Either the foetus is a person with rights, in which case there is a conflict beween the rights of said foetus and the mother, or it is not a person and thus has no more rights than the cat’s latest litter of unwanted kittens and thus there is no conflict of rights.

The middle path that it is a potential person and thus has a limited set of rights is just a fudge. A useful fudge, the one that we actually use in this real world to be sure, but it is a fudging of the basic underlying argument.

Yes, of course you can kill a not human being at the desire of that not human being’s owner. Vets put down animals all the time and butchers’ shops the world over are full of the product of farming.

We generally say that you may only kill a human being in either immediate self-defence or during a Just War. We’ve certainly several centuries worth (more like a millennia’s in fact) discussion of what those two actually mean.

Even the Catholic Church accepts the immediate self-defence argument (under the cloak of treatment to save a mother’s life which happens to kill the child but not a direct and sole attempt to do so) and it would be very difficult indeed to shoehorn abortion into the requirements of a Just War.

(BTW, just for clarity, yes, this argument does mean that capital punishment is immoral, not allowed, for the adult being executed is most certainly a human being.)

Which leaves us just with that remaining question. Human or not? Not? Vacuum away. Human? Killer!

Judy Ann Miracle

I will admit to never having really understood the argument that pregnancy from rape is an all out proof that abortion is at times not just allowable but the righteous and just thing to do.

For whatever your views on short skirts and getting pissed as contributions to being raped are, however you insist that it’s always and everywhere the attacker’s fault, it does seem extremely odd to insist that the one absolute innocent in the scenario is the one selected to die.

The investigation by the Daily Telegraph of several private clinics across the country offering sex-selection terminations because the gender of the unborn baby is unwanted has briefly united campaigners on both sides of the normally highly polarised abortion debate. They have rightly spoken as one in soundly condemning the practice. The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has launched an inquiry. “Sex selection is illegal and is morally wrong,” he is reported as saying.

However, an alarm has also been raised by Darinka Aleksic, campaign co-ordinator for Abortion Rights. She has said that the illegal practices of a small number of clinics should not be used to push for even greater restrictions. Her warning is timely. Abortion is already heavily regulated and strictly licensed in Britain, controlled by legislation now 45 years old. A termination is legal up to 24 weeks, though the majority of terminations occur in the first 14 weeks. A woman who seeks an abortion needs the approval of two doctors and is required to receive counselling.

If such sex selective abortions are illegal then shouldn’t you be calling for the law to be enforced? You know, that “heavily regulated and strictly licensed” thing?

And if they’re not illegal but ought to be, shouldn’t we be strenghtening that law?

Of course, if it’s just fine to scoop one out because it’s not got a dick then why don’t you say so?

Dr Argent also disclosed that he believed that some colleagues had arranged terminations relating to the sex of the foetus and they felt it was reasonable to do so.

“I’ve had a consultant colleague in the North who expressed a view — that consultant was from an ethnic minority … He didn’t think it was ethically wrong because he thought that the cultural reason why some communities may prefer to have four male babies is as good a reason as the, if you like, the Anglo-Saxon cultural view, ‘Well I’m pregnant, I just don’t want it anyway.’  ”

As we know, I disagree with the basic view but this is at least a logical statement.

It’s the you can if you don’t want it but if you don’t want it because it’s female you can’t that is illogical.

With this in mind, it is clear that a very large number, and quite possibly the vast majority, of abortions carried out in this country are against the spirit, if not quite the word, of the law, and that practically all the doctors in this country who sign abortion forms are every bit as guilty as the reviled consultants who have offered sexually selected abortion.

If it is indeed the spirit of the law that must be followed, as we are told by our favourite retired accountant from Wandsworth, then why aren’t half the doctors in the country behind bars?

Doctors at British clinics have been secretly filmed agreeing to terminate foetuses purely because they are either male or female. Clinicians admitted they were prepared to falsify paperwork to arrange the abortions even though it is illegal to conduct such “sex-selection” procedures.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said: “I’m extremely concerned to hear about these allegations. Sex selection is illegal and is morally wrong.

Not just a surprise, quite stunning in fact.

Now we all know that UK law does not in fact provide for abortions on demand. But that’s what the law says. The debate around it is a little more clear cut.

On the one side, it’s not a human, just a blob, entirely up to the woman what she wants to do with it.

On the other it’s one of God’s chosen creatures and so deserving of the same protections the rest of us get.

Despite not believing in the God part I’m, as you know, very much in that second camp and thus resolutely out of step with modern society. My argument is the humanist one, that this life is all there is and no, no one should have their experience of it curtailed just because someone else doesn’t want you around.

Sorry about that statement of belief but it always seems necessary when we discuss this particular subject.

Which leads us to the surprise: we’ve a large and vocal minority (I am pretty sure that the majority are rather uncomfortably on the fence between the two positions going along with Bubba’s hopethat it will be safe, legal and rare and something of a sadness but still something that must be done sometimes) telling us that it’s damn all to do with anyone but the mother. At which point, of course there will be people offering sex specific abortions because that’s what some people want. It’s an inevitable consequence of the existence of the technology and that assertion that it is entirely the mother’s choice.

And as to the statement that this is morally wrong, words, almost, fail me. It’s morally acceptable, correct even, to hoick a baby out to die in a bucket because, well, I’m going on holiday and it would be inconvenient, but morally wrong because it does or does not have a dick?

Even I, and indeed the Catholic Church, can see the point, the morality, of treatment which saves the life of the mother but has the side effect of the death of the foetus. But once you’ve gone beyond that, to the effect that one person’s choices determine the life or not of another, there is no moral dividing line between acceptable reasons for such choices and not acceptable reasons for such choices.

There may be political lines one can draw: We want women to be able to kill the babies they don’t want but we didn’t mean killing babaies just because they are female, as one example. But that’s not a viable moral line. Either there are reasons why women should not be allowed to abort a foetus or there are not. And if we have already said that it’s entirely the woman concerned’s choice then we have already decided that there are no reasons why not.

Or, in short, women are generally, these days, expected to abort a chromosome 21 trisomy foetus. To go from this to insisting that an XX, XY, XXY, XYY or any other of the various possible combinations should not be aborted, indeed must not be aborted, it is immoral and illegal to do so, seems most strange. Especially when it’s just fine to do so as long as that it is XX or XY isn’t the reason you’re doing it.

America’s largest breast cancer advocacy group has been forced to make a self-abasing retraction of its plan to cut funding for Planned Parenthood following a huge outcry against the decision.

Yes, yes, I know the politics. If you’re against breast cancer then you’re in favour of all sorts of wimmins’ stuff like abortion and freebie contraceptives.

The thing is though, if you were really against breast cancer then you’d be in favour of all women bringing one pregnancy to term and then breast feeding. For that’s actually one of the (if not the) greatest risk factor for breast cancer: not having brought to term and breast fed.

So the slogan shouldn’t be about female choice or anything like that: should instead be you can only kill one if you’re already got one.

Something of a difficult sell I agree but logic over politics can lead you into some very strange places.

They had both previously given notice of conscientious objection to any involvement in abortions and said they were not expected to participate in such treatment. But in 2007 the health board introduced changes that meant patients undergoing medical terminations were cared for in the labour ward, where the women worked. They were not expected to administer abortion-inducing drugs but management said requiring conscientious objectors to provide care for patients through a termination was lawful.

What?

But in 2007 the health board introduced changes that meant patients undergoing medical terminations were cared for in the labour ward, where the women worked.

Bed 1, “Yes, a girl, we’re calling her Maisie, we’ve been trying for years to have a girl and now she’s only a day away!”

Bed 2, “Kill mine, cut it up, haul it out and burn the remains”.

Bed 3, “Weak uterus I’m told, have to stay here in bed for as long as I can to give the little chap as much chance as I can. He’ll be premature but maybe not too premature if I just stay calm and quiet and here.”

Bed 4, “19 weeks? Yup, that’s legal, get it out.”

The same ward?

Sirsly?

If we are to be truly utilitarian, the pleasure of a woman who is able to adopt a baby must be included in our calculations along with the relief of a woman who is able to abort one she doesn’t want.

Women who have abortions are at risk of severe mental health problems, new research has found.

Regular readers around here will know that I’m predisposed to believe such a finding.

However, this specific researcher, a Dr. Coleman, has form in the area:

The study said that abortion was linked with a 34 per cent greater chance of anxiety disorders, and 37 per cent higher possibility of depression, a more than double risk of alcohol abuse – 110 per cent – a three times greater risk of cannabis use – at 220 per cent – and 155 per cent greater risk of trying to commit suicide.

The long term complaint about her work is that she doesn’t control properly for the correlation/causation thing.

For example, we wouldn’t really be all that surprised if a mentally fragile boozy dope smoker was more likely to have an abortion in the first place than someone more mentally sound, sober and clear headed.

Heck, we wouldn’t be all that surprised if the latter were either less likely to have unprotected sex or to take better care of her contraception.

The actual truth of the matter no doubt Unity will be along to tell us in 30,000 words soon enough.

Quite apart from anything else, just such a surprise to have such a finding popping up right in the middle of the current political debate, isn’t it?

On the other hand, the British Journal of Psychiatry is not a paper mill, it’s a very respectable journal.

After receiving a letter from the centre, the hospital initially told the nurses that they would be excused from administering the abortion-inducing drugs but would have to remain working at the clinic.

The nurses’ lawyer, Neil Addison, wrote again to the hospital stating that the nurses would still be “morally complicit in abortion” if they continued to work in the clinic as nurses in any capacity. The hospital eventually conceded and the nurses were allocated to other duties.

Mr Addison, director of the Thomas More Legal Centre, argued that the NHS had wrongly denied the nurses their right as conscientious objectors not to take part in abortions, which is set out in the 1967 Abortion Act.

He also invoked the Equality Act 2010. In a move that is believed to be a legal first, Mr Addison claimed that the nurses’ belief in the sanctity of life from conception onwards was “a philosophical belief” protected under the Equality Act. Therefore any attempt to pressure them into working in the clinic would be illegal.

“This particular interpretation of the Equality Act has never, to my knowledge, been argued before,” Mr Addison said. “However since the courts have accepted that the philosophical belief in global warming is protected under equality legislation, there seems no reason why belief that human life begins at conception should not be equally protected.”

It’s extremely difficult to see that they don’t have a case as well.

Not having to perform or partake in abortions is expressely protected in law, under the Abortion Act itself. And if gorbal wormening is a protected belief then life at conception seems worthy of similar treatment.

And finally, it’s really quite difficult to insist that people must kill people (by their own lights of course) in order to keep their jobs as nurses: something which is normally held to be about aiding in curing people.

And finally finally, while this seems to be about Catholic nurses the standard Islamic or Muslim view (which is very similar to the archaic Catholic view, absolutely not after the quickening at 4 months, maybe but probably not before that….the maybe and probably revolving around the reason. “I don’t want a child” on the probably not side, “I was raped by the Serbs” on the maybe side (that being an actual fatwa)) is an important thing to consider given the number of immigrants we have working in the NHS.

The plans have sparked controversy, with pro-life campaigners accusing advertising authorities of “trivialising” human life by treating terminations as a consumer choice like cars or washing powder.

They emerged as a report accused clinics of using “hard sell” marketing to push pregnant women seeking counselling into having terminations, in order to make more money.

Under the draft recommendations, drawn up by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, which regulates TV and radio commercials, dozens of independent hospitals carrying out abortions will be able to advertise their services to consumers.

Until now, restrictions have meant abortion clinics can only advertise their services if they are not run for profit.

This is amusing, isn’t it?

All those screaming that private companies must not be allowed to cherry pick from the NHS, must not be allowed to profit from health care. So, you are all up in arms about private for profit companies being able to make money out of killing babies women controlling their fertility then?

If not, why not?

But to the specific point of advertising on TV: if it’s legal to do the act, which it is, legal to perform the service or produce the good, then I’d say it’s legal for you to advertise it. Simple freedom of speech would seem to require that. Why is the producer of one legal good allowed to tell people about their production and the producer of another not?

This does rather run into the problem that my view would therefore allow the advertising of booze, fags, dildoes and all the rest on TV. Which, of course, it would. And I have a sneaky feeling that those most likely to say that “Of course!” abortion clinics should be allowed to advertise would be those most against allowing baccy to be advertised. Which is an odd position to hold really: both kill people but one incidentally, the other the death is the very purpose. Odd to argue that only the one that intends to kill is the one allowed to advertise.

Still, the fact that there are restrictions on what can be avertised, on whatever grounds, makes their case for allowing the advertising of abortion clinics a little harder. For once the “it’s legal, go ahead” line has been breached, then what are the dividing lines between what can and cannot be advertised?

“What I like or approve of” isn’t a justification for such restrictions upon free speech really, is it?

So on what basis can we distinguish between “Come kill your baby with us, we really care” and “Have a gin M’Dear”?

Or even, why can’t the gin companies advertise a bottle and a hot bath in competition with the abortion clinics?

Yes, I know my views on abortion are well out of the mainstream. No, that’s not the point of this piece at all.

Much of the literature on sex selection has suggested that cultural patterns explain the phenomenon. But Hvisten dahl lays the blame squarely on western governments and businesses that have exported technology and pro-abortion practices without considering the consequences. Amniocentesis and ultrasound scans have had largely positive applications in the west, where they have been used to detect foetal abnormalities. But exported to Asia and eastern Europe they have been intricately linked to an explosion of sex selection and a mushrooming of female abortions.

Hvistendahl claims western governments actively promoted abortion and sex selection in the developing world, encouraging the liberalisation of abortion laws and subsidising sales of ultrasounds as a form of population control.

And if we hadn’t exported the technology we’d still be to blame.

Vide The Guardian and all points lefty vitriol at Georgie Bush, who insisted that no family planning aid could go to those who even advised, let alone performed, abortions.

I do wish that people would keep the story straight. Are we vicious meanies because we’ve offered foreign women the same freedoms that those at home have or are we vicious meanies because we didn’t deny them such freedoms?

But you simply cannot call yourself “pro-choice” and then bar people who do not agree with you from expressing their opposing view. It’s an oxymoronic position. People who defend such regressive behaviour, simply mirror that of the dictatorial hardliners they supposedly stand against. Then they wonder why they get called “feminazis”.

Quite.

A group which is opposed to abortion in all circumstances and favours an abstinence-based approach to sex education has been appointed to advise the government on sexual health.

The Life organisation has been invited to join a new sexual health forum set up to replace the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV.

Stuart Cowie, Life’s head of education, said: “We are delighted to be invited into the group, representing views that have not always been around on similar tables in the past.”

In contrast, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) has been omitted from the forum despite its long-term position on the previous advisory group and 40-year track record in providing pregnancy counselling nationwide.

How terrible, eh?

Now, take a deep breath and look at the total composition of the panel:

The forum consists of representatives of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV; the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists; the Association of Directors of Public Health; the British HIV Association; the Terrence Higgins Trust; Brook; the Family Planning Association; the Sex Education Forum and National Children’s Bureau; Marie Stopes International; and Life.

Ah, see? The views of the BPAS on anything at all will be indistinguishable from those of Marie Stopes or the FPA. So what we’re actually getting is a broadening of the views being put forward without any loss of views being put forward.

And yes, this is the right thing to do in a democracy: all views should be represented, remember? Life may be a bit odd (their views on condoms seem to be less than scientific) but there are quite a number of people who don’t think that abortion is the solution to anything (other than the question “How can we kill kiddies?”) and shouldn’t their views be represented?