As the DIY abortion scheme is made permanent, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children’s Alithea Williams explains how MPs have abandoned vulnerable girls.
On Wednesday 31st March, MPs voted by 215 votes to 188 to make the controversial “pills by post” abortion scheme permanent. I have written before about the dangers of this policy. However, the debate in Parliament revealed yet more horrific consequences – the impact on underage girls.
Carla Lockhart MP quoted a BBC story about 16 year old “Savannah”, who took abortion drugs after the clinic she approached by phone calculated that she was less than eight weeks pregnant. Savannah took both pills at home but after the second felt “really bad” pain.
“My relative called another ambulance because when I was pushing, my boyfriend could see feet,” Savannah said. The baby had been born with a heartbeat and they had both been taken to hospital. It was concluded she had been between 20 and 21 weeks pregnant. Savannah said she had been left traumatised. She said: “If they scanned me and I knew that I was that far gone, then I would have had him.”
Ms Lockhart told Parliament: “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.”
“If they scanned me and I knew that I was that far gone, then I would have had him.”
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 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.
47 cases of early medical abortions that resulted in mid-to-late pregnancy terminations, across all ages, since the start of the pandemic.
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 MP said: “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.”
It 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?
In voting this through, MPs have abandoned vulnerable women and girls. We must not do the same. 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.
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