The point that I wanted to make is that, as a consequence, in whichever way we now plan, purchase and provide services for patients, if someone in management—the chief executive—is against abortion, could that mean that they would conscientiously object and refuse to have abortion as part of the service in that area? It is extremely complicated.
If in this country abortion is legal, under the parameters set by the Act, then it should be implemented equally for all women in this country. It should not be at the whim of individual practitioners, whether they be doctors, managers or secretaries—whoever is going to affect the service delivery to the women of this country if they are allowed to conscientiously object. If they do so, they should not join the service in the first place. No one is obliging them to. There are plenty of jobs around that do not involve abortion, so why do they not do them?
I have a bit of experience. At one time, I was head of women’s services for a health authority in London, during which I was in charge of family planning and liaising with GPs—and, in fact, of setting up an abortion service because the hospital doctors were finding it difficult to cope. We franchised it out to the BPAS, as I think it was at the time. That was one of the first times that that had happened. It was very well and efficiently run but when I think of the number of people involved in setting up that service, both when it was in the health service and when we franchised it out, if everyone involved had had the ability to conscientiously object, that would have completely upset the service. I do not know how we would have got it going.
To extend it a little more, if you have a certain number of people exercising a conscientious objection in one field, that may put extra strain on people in other fields who are not normally employed in that service to fill in and to do that job for them. You would be setting up a situation that could disrupt all the services in a hospital, not just the obstetric and gynae services.
Finally, I say to the people who oppose abortion that I fully understand their reasons. I understand the religious beliefs behind it in some cases. However, whether a country provides safe abortion or not, the same number of abortions take place because, if a woman cannot access abortion, like the women in Birmingham in the early 1970s, they will go to illegal practitioners, they will endanger their life and often they will die. When people oppose abortion, they are actually providing a route for some women to lose their lives. That is a terrible thing to have to say, but it is true.
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