My Lords, we are running out of time and the Committee will want to try to dispose of this amendment before we rise. I begin with a note of agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, which is that this debate has been of a very high order. There has been no waste of time and no filibustering, and it has been the House of Lords at its best.
The reason I began by quoting from the document produced by the Church of England in 1965 is that that was the basis on which the Church of England and subsequently the Church of Scotland, to which I belong, and indeed the Methodist Church endorsed the reforms of the abortion law. Their endorsement rested very much on the arguments produced in that report. However, I agree with what the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, said: we have to respect those who took a very different view.
It will not surprise noble Lords to know that, because of the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act, I have lately been getting quite a lot of correspondence—half fan letters and half hate letters. If I may quote from one that came in on Wednesday, it will show the sort of thing that we ought to take into account:
“For more than 46 years laws which lethally discriminate against new human life have brought about the senseless deaths of more than 8,000,000 unborn babies. Abortion is truly the holocaust of our time, but the one ignored by the mainstream media, and, it seems, just about everyone else too”.
It is because I sympathised with and respect that view that I undertook, in discussion with the Catholic seminary, the introduction of the conscience clause. The problem I have with the Bill is that it is not clear where the line is to be drawn. For example, if you are appointed as the chief executive of a health board, everything underneath that health board is under your jurisdiction. What happens if you have a conscientious objection to abortions being carried out? That is the fundamental problem with the Bill: nowhere is a clear line drawn.
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The noble Lord, Lord McColl, asked me a straight question: is it right that the Glasgow health board should have sacked Mary Duggan? In fact, I understand that she was not sacked but withdrew her services, although that may be a distinction without a difference, because she objected to having to administer abortion cases. My answer is that I do not think she should have gone. However, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has tabled a later amendment to which I am rather attracted, saying that where somebody cannot provide the services, they are under an obligation to refer to somebody else.
That has always been understood to be the case, but it is nowhere stated in the law. The noble Lord’s amendment would state that, and therefore I am somewhat sympathetic to it.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, talked generously about the events of 50 years ago. He is right: the Abortion Act is 50 years old and it is out of date. When we were legislating then, the only methods of abortion were surgical of one kind or another. Now, we have the abortion pill, and the whole situation has changed. The noble Lord is right to say that there ought to be a general inquiry into the future of the law in this area. That is very important, because I have never taken the position that what was decided in 1967 should be everlasting and always right.
I believe that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, got it right, and I was most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, for going into much more detail than I did on what she said. In fact, she was a bit foolhardy: she went on to list a whole series of examples of where a conscience clause should apply and where it should not. I have the list with me here and have read it. It was a pretty foolhardy thing to do but it was, I think, a helpful guide to the medical
profession. This House is indeed entitled to overturn the Supreme Court, but I think it would be unwise to do so. That is why I have put forward Amendment 1.
I want to make one final point. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said that they are fellows of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists—and so am I.