Archers and the ante-natal testing story

Fans of the Archers (a long-running radio drama/soap on BBC R4) may be following with interest the storyline of Vicky’s pregnancy. Vicky is a middle-aged woman married to Mike, grandfather of two. Her pregnancy was unplanned and came as quite a shock, though a happy shock as far as Vicky is concerned. Although we often associate unplanned pregnancy with teenagers, the reality is that women of all ages experience unintended pregnancy.* 

In addition to the shock of the pregnancy, Vicky and her partner, Mike, have also had to deal with the news that initial screening tests have found her at higher than normal risk of carrying a fetus with Down's Syndrome . Vicky and Mike find themselves having to make sense of alot of medical information and facing decisions they are completely unprepared for.

They are offered an amniocentesis test to give them a definitive answer about whether or not they will have a baby with Down’s Syndrome, but they have to decide whether the risk of miscarriage associated with the test (up to 1%) is worth taking. After talking to the midwife they realise that if the test is positive for Down’s Syndrome they will have another decision to make – whether or not to continue with the pregnancy. 

It’s great when TV and radio dramas take up interesting topics – an opportunity to inform the public and stimulate discussion about contemporary real life issues. It’s really good when broadcasters take responsibility for giving accurate information, and think carefully about the impact of the programme on people who’ve had experience of these issues or dilemmas. Too often storylines are simplistic, hysterical, insensitive or inaccurate and broadcasters try to compensate for this by putting up a ‘helpline’ number at the end for anyone ‘affected’ by the topic (often just a recorded message).

So far I think the BBC is doing a pretty good job with the Archers. They have integrated some accurate information into the story line and tried to represent the range of viewpoints and emotions associated with this situation.  I’ll be listening with interest to see if they can keep it up as the story unfurls.

I wonder if the BBC got in touch with Antenatal Results and Choices (ARC)  to advise on the script. They are the UK experts in informing and supporting women, their partners and families when they face a diagnosis of fetal anomaly. For anyone who is in this situation now ARC is there to help you understand the information you have been given, explore your feelings around the pregnancy and support you in whatever decision you think is the right one for you. 

For anyone who is moved by this story line, relieved they have never had to face this painful situation or glad that there is an organisation out there to help, why not consider a donation to ARC.  

And finally, yes, it’s true...I do listen to the Archers *buries head in shame and realises she's turning into her mum*

*While huge investment has been made over recent years in reducing teenage pregnancy and addressing high levels of Chlamydia and other STIs amongst teenagers, the fpa recently tried to balance this out with a campaign to provide more information about contraception to older people in recognition that they have often missed out on essential sexual health messages and services and may not know that they are still at risk of pregnancy . Not only does pregnancy often come as a shock to older women, they often haven't recognised that they are pregnant until some weeks into pregnancy, mistaking their missing periods for the onset of the menopause. This may be one reason why older women are over-represented in the statistics for abortions that take place in the second trimester of pregnancy.

40 Days for Lies? Audio files

Our latest blog exposed the crisis pregnancy centre (aka Central London Women's Centre/Albany Women's Centre/Good Counsel Network) that the 40 Days for Life protesters have been giving out literature for. Here are a few sound clips of a counselling session which took place at that centre.
Central London Women's Centre Audio

1. ...if you make this decision, this baby will have no life. And also it dies in terrible pain
2. ...the risk of getting cancer after abortion is 100%
3. ...many women have many miscarriages from abortion
4. ...we will harm the baby.  We will kill the baby.  We, we will do something horrible to the baby
5. ...abortion is something that comes from the powers of darkness because it’s about destroying

Gender abortion the new 'revelation'

Until relatively recently when we talked about gender abortion it was largely something that happened in far away lands and was almost always something carried out by women carrying female fetuses. It’s something that the Indian government and others have been trying to address for many years. The practice is both the result of, and reinforces, social, sexual, economic and political inequality. It also leads to numerical imbalance in the population which you can see in countries where abortion of female fetuses is routine.


Gender abortion in this context presents a huge challenge. In addition to embedded historical valuing of boys over girls, there are compelling material reasons for families to dread the birth of a baby girl. The dowry system can impoverish a family, the loss of a daughter to the in-laws family after marriage can leave parents with no support in old age; this in addition to all the incidental inequality and discrimination that can blight, and prematurely end, the lives of women and girls. Women carrying female fetuses may also be subject to violence if they have been unable to ‘produce’ a boy child. All this contributes to a context in which it’s possible for mobile ultra sound units to travel through rural areas making a fortune out of extremely poor families who want to know the sex of their fetus and will often resort to unsafe illegal abortion to end their pregnancies if they get the ‘wrong’ news.


Criminalising this practice has not ended it, and those who dread the birth of a female child but cannot access ultrasound or abortion sometimes resort to infanticide of female infants. For girls who survive their early years, a life time of poorer access to education, health care, and food means that for many life is harsh, brutal and short. Those working in this field recognise that until girls and women are seen and treated as equals; until families and communities reject traditions that socially and financially disadvantage women; until marriage traditions that impoverish the families of brides are ended and women are no longer seen as a burden, until universal good quality health care and education is a realised right, and the burden of poverty is lifted no amount of legislation will bring gender abortion to an end.


Today the Telegraph runs a story about abortion clinics in the UK providing abortion for women and their partners who want to choose the sex of their child. While some people desiring this may come from communities where boys are traditionally seen as more desirable than girls, there may be other motivations for people in the UK to want to choose the sex of their children. Although I have not seen a research evidence to support this, there is anecdotal evidence (reported on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning) of couples who want to have ‘one of each’ or as the Telegraph article calls it ‘family balancing’. I’ve also heard of couples who, ironically, want to have girls only (as girls in UK mainstream culture are seen as less trouble or less of a burden than boys). If it is true, it is hard to know where to start with it. People in the economically developed world may look down their noses at the global South, and the appalling gender discrimination that leads to specific abortion of girl fetuses, but what notions of gender could be behind such decision-making in the global North? Only yesterday a Daily Mail journalist showed how far we have to go, characterising ‘tom boys’ as an irritation  who, thankfully, grow out of it when they start getting interested in boys and start dressing and behaving like proper women - alongside a whole load of other prejudice and ignorance... *despair*. This is such a big discussion, I’m going to leave it for another day...


Meanwhile, I’m sure the anti-abortion lobby are going to have a field day with the Telegraph’s report. It is, of course, no coincidence that the article has come out just before the Department of Health is about to publish a consultation document on pre-abortion counselling which is premised on the un-evidenced claim that there is a current problem with the abortion counselling provided by the two big independent abortion providers MSI and bpas. It is part of whipping up anxiety about the current state of practice in order to support changing the system, despite the House of Commons wholeheartedly rejecting an attempt to do so through Nadine Dorries MP’s amendment to the Health and Social Care bill in September last year. 


The current system means that all women seeking abortion from MSI and bpas which provide 62% of NHS funded abortions and a large proportion of privately funded abortions to women from N.Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, go through a process heavily regulated by the Department of Health. Education For Choice has worked tirelessly to promote good practice in supporting pregnancy decision-making for years and to root out poor practice, and have found no evidence of poor practice, and no record of formal complaints to regulators about the practice of organisations currently registered as Pregnancy Advice Bureaux. 


If clinics are providing abortion without offering good standards of care  then of course this should be addressed as a matter of urgency. As well as meeting legal requirements, women attending properly regulated Bureaux are always checked for signs of coercion or pressure from partners and family members, and a check on how confident she is in her decision. Every piece of research I have read about the outcomes of abortion suggest that feeling ambivalent about the abortion or being coerced into having one are significant risk factors in negative psychological outcomes. So clinics should ensure that this check on the decision-making process is part of the referral procedure.


Poor practice should be addressed as a matter of urgency. However, we should be wary about letting the poor practice of the few serve as the basis for a wide ranging change in law and regulation of all clinics which would disadvantage all women seeking abortion in the long term.  Suggestions of new commissioning regulations for abortion counselling are likely to divert women away from professional, well-regulated and well-evaluated abortion services towards a hotch potch of unskilled, unregulated independent counsellors some of whose agenda might be to prevent women accessing abortion and who will, in any case add delays into the process of accessing abortion, adding to the waiting times, risks and costs for women and the NHS.


Most importantly, these ‘revelations’ should not be seen as grounds for rexamining the basis of our abortion law in this country as is clearly the intention behind this article. A minority of people in the UK would like to see abortion completely criminalised here and aim to get there by stealth, chipping away at, and reducing women’s access to abortion incrementally through changes to regulation, law and practice. This strategy has been extremely successful in the United States, making abortion extremely hard to access in many parts of the country, though failing to bring down the abortion rate overall. 


The anti-abortion movement in the UK is learning its lessons from the US well. The rest of us – who all want abortion to remain a safe, legal and well-regulated option for women – need to be alert and learn them too.  Be prepared for more ‘revelations’ more ‘shocking truth’ about abortion, more undermining of current law and provision. Coming to a newspaper near you soon. Watch this space...


Post Script - Some couples sex-select because they want to prevent the risk of passing on genetic disesases. I have not addressed this in this blog, but it is addressed in this report on the issue from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority

Advertising abortion services on T.V

The Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) has announced a change in its regulations which would allow any organisation providing ‘post conception advice services’ to advertise in the broadcast media.

This changes everything...or does it?

Some anti-abortion organisations and anti-abortion MPs have expressed dismay that this ruling will lead to our airwaves being awash with advertising for abortion services, thereby ‘de-sensitising’ the public to how serious abortion is. In reality it is unlikely to lead to much new advertising. Those providing abortions in the not-for-profit sector like the big two, bpas and Marie Stopes, were already allowed to advertise and have only done so once between them (Marie Stopes in 2010). The private sector only provides 4% of abortions in England and Wales and though private clinics are now allowed to advertise are unlikely to do so as the cost would probably be prohibitive. So, it is unlikely we will see any significant increase in broadcast advertising of abortion services as a result of these changes.

The other important aspect of the new regulations is that they require those offering post conception services to be transparent about whether they refer women for abortion. The BCAP has said that this decision was made on public health grounds. This is because of a concern that a woman seeking abortion could be delayed if she chose to go to an independent pregnancy counselling service, not realising that they would not or could not refer her directly into an abortion service if this is what she chose. This change in regulation is welcomed by all those who – like EFC – are concerned that some women may be unnecessarily delayed from accessing abortion by making and waiting for an appointment with a service that might slow down the process -  either deliberately or through simple logistics. Some people have objected to this transparency requirement on the grounds that while pregnancy advice organisations have to be honest about not referring for abortion, organisations like MSI and bpas do not have to disclose that they are abortion providers when offering post conception advice services. In reality it would be impossible to visit the bpas and MSI websites without realising that they provide abortions....If anything, the normal criticism of bpas and MSI from anti-choice campaigners like Nadine Dorries, is that they are constantly promoting their abortion services.

So, what will this part of the regulations change? Some independent (or ‘crisis’) pregnancy counselling centres are currently vague about what they offer. Some try to give the impression that they will support women to access abortion, although in fact they don’t. In July last year EFC published a report based on mystery shopping crisis pregnancy centres. We found that while some did explain clearly how to access an abortion to a client who had chosen to have one, others could not or would not provide any practical information to mystery shoppers. We think it is vital that any woman seeking support with pregnancy decision-making should also be given support to access abortion as quickly as possible if that is what she chooses. If this regulation helps women to identify the most suitable place to go to get the service they need and prevents women experiencing unnecessary delays in accessing abortion, then it will have made a positive difference.

The only incentives in life are financial

The myth that underlies The Dorries/Field amendment on abortion is that abortion providers have a financial incentive to promote abortion and therefore their employees do not and cannot provide independent, non-directive support for women trying to make a decision about whether or not to continue a pregnancy.

I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure if I had more time I could lay my hands on copious literature which finds that people are motivated and incentivised to act by a range of different factors, only one of which is money. I would take an amateurish stab at things such as shared values within your community or amongst your peers and family, strongly held philosophical or religious belief, and more. 

In my experience, for example, those working for abortion providers in any capacity are very strongly motivated by a profound and deeply held belief in a woman’s right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy and a horror of the known consequences of witholding safe, legal, free and accessible abortion as a real option for women. 

Surely the biggest incentive people have is their own personal belief, and that’s why it’s hard to fathom that during this whole debate on ‘independent counselling’ not a single organisation that was founded on an anti-abortion principles, and staffed by people who oppose abortion, has felt the need to explain how their deeply held belief that abortion is wrong does not provide them with an incentive to dissuade or obstruct women from accessing abortion.

Even in this materialistic world we all inhabit, I still think that strongly held beliefs trump money for most people. So, once again I ask you... all of you who have a strongly held belief – whether grounded in a faith position or otherwise – that every abortion is intrinsically wrong, sinful, damaging and tragic, how can you NOT want to dissuade women from having an abortion. 

More discussion of this is here and here

Advertising Standards Authority rule against anti-abortion group

Advertising Standards Authority rules against anti-abortion advice centre


Just as the Government is considering changing regulations on abortion counselling and diverting women to alternative, ‘independent’ abortion advice centres, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) today upheld a complaint about an anti-abortion counselling centre. 


Education For Choice (EFC) made the complaint about an advert placed by the Albany Women’s Centre, an anti-abortion counselling organisation, on Yell.com. EFC objected that the ad was misleading, because it did not make clear that Albany Women's Centre was an anti-abortion group who would not offer impartial advice on abortions.


EFC made the complaint after their own enquiries found that women who attend this organisation for counselling about unwanted pregnancy may be given misinformation and subjected to biased views on abortion.


EFC Director, Lisa Hallgarten, said:


‘We are extremely pleased that the Advertising Standards Authority ruled against the Yell.com advert. It is totally unacceptable that women seeking impartial support and evidence-based information to support them to make a difficult decision about pregnancy should be subjected to misinformation and bias. We are especially concerned about the effect of these services on young people’s ability to make decisions and access services quickly. 


We hope this ruling will draw attention to the fact that there are organisations on our high streets, which advertise pregnancy support and advice but which oppose contraception and abortion and whose intention is to obstruct or dissuade women from accessing these services. 


The Government is currently considering new regulations that will divert women seeking abortion away from the highly regulated abortion providers and towards ‘independent’ counselling organisations. We hope this timely ruling will encourage the Government to think carefully about who is providing these alternative services, what their motivation is for doing so, how transparent they are about what they really offer, and what quality of service women might expect from them.’

Myth Busting Monday - pro-choice orgs don't care about pregnancy counselling

The Dorries/Field amendment on abortion counselling is based on the false premise that women cannot currently access impartial support with pregnancy decision-making . Whether or not they expect their amendment to be successful, it is obvious that the main intention of the amendment is to promote the view that:
• those who provide abortion are hell-bent on encouraging women to have abortions they do not really want
• those who support access to safe, legal abortion don't care about whether women make the right decision about abortion


As an organisation that believes women should have easy access to good quality abortion services, EFC has worked very hard to improve the level of support that young women and their partners get with pregnancy decision-making. 


For ten years EFC has delivered a training course for school nurses, youth workers, sexual health workers, teachers, social workers (in fact anyone who works with young people). This provides tools and information to help professionals provide impartial support with pregnancy decision-making. It recognises that young people may find this process difficult – they may lack: knowledge and understanding of the different pregnancy options; the skills to assess their thoughts and feelings and weigh up the benefits and disadvantages of parenthood; or the support at home to decide what’s best for them.  Young people may not want to go to their GP and may not know how to access an abortion provider directly for information or support. It’s important that the professionals who young people trust are able to provide this support when and where they ask for it.


Education For Choice has written a toolkit to encourage and enable professionals to provide support with pregnancy  decision-making to the young women and men they work with. The toolkit makes the case for providing this support when and where it is needed and includes practical information and ideas on how to do so. It also provides a checklist for professionals and local area commissioners to assess the quality, impartiality and usefulness of local independent pregnancy services.


Education For Choice has published a workbook of practical tools and exercises to help those professionals working with young people to work through their decision-making process with them and to create a document of the process to increase young women’s confidence in their decision.


As a pro-choice organisation we’re really committed to good quality pregnancy decision-making support.

Myth-Busting Monday: All independent pregnancy advice centres offer women impartial, balanced pregnancy decision-making support

Since Lisa wrote a blog about Nadine Dorries and Frank Field’s ‘Right to Know’ campaign and their proposed amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill we’ve seen the issue discussed by a number of journalists and bloggers. In light of that, today’s Myth Busting Monday focuses on one particular aspect of this campaign which we believe could pose a real threat to women’s access to impartial support with pregnancy decision-making, and that is the presence of unregulated pregnancy advice centres.

The Right to Know site claims that:
An amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill would guarantee that all women considering abortion have access to independent advice and counselling - provided by someone with no vested financial interest in the outcome of their decision.

Our question is – just who would be providing this service? What is the alternative for a woman who doesn’t speak to her doctor or a counsellor at an abortion provider?

Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPCs)
There are already a number of independent pregnancy advice centres across the country. Some are upfront about operating with a specifically anti-abortion agenda, some aren’t. Some are transparent about religious affiliations or funding organisations, some aren’t. Some may be providing evidence-based information and impartial support to women facing an unplanned pregnancy but we know of many more which aren’t. Our own research, coupled with the insight of the many professionals we speak to across the UK suggests that a good number of these centres are not offering women a balanced discussion of their pregnancy options but rather serving misinformation, health myths, overblown statistics and, in some cases showing women anti-abortion videos. This Channel 5 news report gives an idea of the kind of misleading information which may be given by a CPC.

Our concern is that suggestions that women need to look for independent pregnancy advice could open up the capacity of centres which offer biased information, driven by an agenda. Perhaps not the ‘financial incentive’ Dorries accuses abortion providers of, but an agenda nevertheless.

Why Field and Dorries are wrong

Nadine Dorries and Frank Field will propose an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill to ensure that women receive pre-abortion counselling from someone who does not ‘have a financial interest’ in providing the abortion.

In an interview on LBC radio on Friday evening (no link possible as it's subscription only) Dorries laid bare the assumptions behind this amendment. An interview with Michaela Aston of LIFE showed how eager anti-abortion organisations would be, in the event it became law, to exploit it for their own ends.

Assumption 1: Women seeking abortion all need Counselling (big C)

In fact women considering abortion all need different levels of support to ensure they are making the right decision.

At one end of the spectrum you will encounter women who have always been clear that they do not want to be pregnant and that they would have an abortion in the event of pregnancy. When they experience pregnancy this certainty remains and they are able to make a quick and unambivalent decision to end the unwanted pregnancy.

At the other end of the spectrum are women who are carrying wanted pregnancies, but whose health, circumstances or other factors mean that the continuing the pregnancy now carries serious risks for them. This may present an excruciating decision for the woman and she may require a great deal of professional and family/partner support during this time.(Antenatal Results and Choices – ARC – provides excellent support for women who have been given a diagnosis of fetal anomaly)

In between these two ends of the spectrum women experience the dilemma of unintended pregnancy in a range of ways. Some have sufficient support around them to have the conversations they need to have and to do the thinking they need to do about the pregnancy before they even reach a healthcare professional. Others may present to a healthcare professional needing either more clarification of health issues or additional support with decision-making.

‘Counselling’ with a BIG C may be useful for a woman who presents with a range of complex emotional problems, when pregnancy has brought pre-existing and unresolved problems to a head, when she is particularly conflicted by the decision, or when a health care professional is anxious that they sense deep-seated ambivalence about the choice she is making. Counselling may be experienced as overkill by women in more settled situations.

Women’s circumstances are all unique, and their knowledge levels, support systems, age, confidence and other personal characteristics will all impact on the difficulty or otherwise of making the decision. Women seek help, support and advice from a range of people other than health care professionals and may well have done absolutely all their thinking before they go to their GP to ask for an abortion referral. Ideally flexibility and responsiveness from healthcare professionals and organisations should provide women with the level of support they choose and need. (see EFC Best Practice Tookit: Pregnancy Decision-Making Support for how best to support teenagers)

Assumption 2: Women who get an abortion from an independent abortion provider such as bpas and MSI do not get sufficient counselling or accurate information about risks because those organisations have a vested interest in pressurising women to have an abortion

No healthcare provider wants a woman to undergo an abortion she feels ambivalent about. Abortion services traditionally have a relatively high ‘did not attend’ (DNA) rate because women are reassured that they can change their mind at any time and some do. Moreover, BPAS calculates that 20% of women referred to them for abortion - having used their consultation appointment to reflect again on their decision - choose to continue their pregnancy.

The idea that they have a vested interest in women having abortions is linked solely to the fact that they are paid for the abortions they carry out. It is an undeniable fact that, like brain surgeons, GPs, dentists, opticians and all other health professionals, abortion providers are paid to do the work they do. They are professionals not volunteers...

Like all health providers, abortion providers are obliged to ensure informed consent by outlining risks and side effects of procedures. This is the same for people providing abortions in NHS hospitals, in independent non-profit providers such as bpas and MSI, and in Harley Street. In fact, abortion is highly regulated in non-NHS settings.

Assumption 3: The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists which produces the guidelines for professionals providing abortions are not the appropriate body to do so because they too have a vested interest in promoting abortion.

The idea that the RCOG wants to promote abortion is, quite frankly ridiculous. The RCOG is engaged in developing and disseminating best practice across a wide range of areas relating to women's health, including: pregnancy and childbirth, maternal health, treatment for obstetric and gynaecological conditions and more. Abortion occupies a fraction of its attention.

The RCOG guidelines are evidence-based. They draw upon methodologically sound studies from around the world and UK experience to inform their conclusions and recommendations.

Abortion providers are included in the committee that creates the guidelines for professionals because it is normal practice to include medical experts on panels providing guidelines on a specialist area of medicine.

Assumption 4: Anyone who is not an abortion provider will give better support and information for women because they do not have a vested interest in ‘making’ a woman have an abortion

Some GPs will be able to provide good quality information and support with decision-making. In fact many women already go via their GP for an abortion referral and some will be getting information about abortion at that point. However, a significant number of GPs (at least one in 20% of GP practices) actively opposes abortion and may use their right to conscientiously object as licence to refuse to give accurate information and impartial support to a woman seeking abortion. This fact cannot have passed by the supporters of the amendment.

This amendment is part of a wider bill which is about giving GPs the power to decide on how much of the NHS budget will be used, it seems unlikely they will consider spending proper time counselling women about abortion the best use of their resources.

The anti-abortion charity LIFE's response to this amendment (via Aston on LBC) was little less than a licking of lips. Anti-abortion charities may well see this as an opportunity to 'help' GPs out by offering with their own particular brand of counselling via Crisis Pregnancy Centres.

Most independent pregnancy advice organisations or Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPCs) originate from organisations that are very anti-abortion. While many different organisations run these centres and their practice varies enormously, the bottom line is that most people working for these organisations believe that abortion is at worst a moral abomination and at best harmful. Some are guilty of deliberately misinforming women about the risks of abortion, others of convincing women to continue unwanted pregnancies. There may be examples of CPCs that provide impartial, evidence-based advice and guidance, but as they are totally unregulated it is hard to know which of them do and which of them don’t.

No comprehensive study of Crisis Pregnancy Centres has been carried out in the UK, but this Channel Five news feature shows examples of particularly poor practice:

This report on CPCs from Ireland suggests they are not a reliable source of information

This report from United States outlines the many ways in which CPCs deceive women

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This is an extremely ideologically driven amendment. Dorries admits its purpose is to reduce the number of abortions. It is probably just the first of a planned programme of legislative attacks on women's right to choose and access safe, legal abortion.

This is why we oppose these amendments.

Hoping that GPs will step up to provide good quality counselling around abortion is either extremely naive or extremely cynical. Encouraging women to attend (or even insisting they attend) counselling at a separate provider, and bypassing central booking systems, will increase the time it takes to access an abortion. Creating unnecessary delays for women is unethical as abortions are safer the earlier in pregnancy they are carried out.

GPs are likely to mitigate the additional costs of providing this counselling by relying on voluntary organisations like CPCs (see above) who may have the funding to provide this free of charge.

It is unlikely that full funding for professional counselling will be mandated in the bill or that Field and Dorries will call for proper regulation of those providing abortion counselling in Crisis Pregnancy Centres.

It is unlikely any provision will be made to protect women from 'conscientiously objecting doctors'

This amendment is not about improving health outcomes for women, but is an attempt to dissuade women from accessing abortion, and obstructing those who do want to have one.

By casting doubt on the integrity of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists this amendment aims deliberately to undermine a really important source of evidence-based information - information they would rather the public didn't access, as it does not support the anti-abortion case.

There are more effective and more ethical ways to try to reduce the abortion rate than making access more diffcult and time-consuming, or giving women misinformation about the consequences.

If Nadine Dorries and Frank Field’s main aim is to stop women having abortions wouldn’t they be better off putting in an amendment to the health and social care bill that guarantees funding for all women to have easy access to the full range of contraceptive methods, including the three methods of emergency contraception, free of charge, seven days a week and at a range of outlets?

Wouldn’t they be better supporting calls for statutory, comprehensive Sex and Relationships - teaching young people about fertility, contraception, emergency contraception, pregnancy decision-making and encouraging them to think about the risks, benefits and consequences of sexual relationships?

Only today news came out that in the UK there are many preventable deaths of pregnant women each year from pre-eclampsia as a result of lack of investment in maternity services. If you really cared about women wouldn't this be the issue you might choose to campaign on?