2]  Currently, there is an Early Day Motion (EDM) entitled, Informed Consent For Abortion, which has been tabled in the House of Commons by Therese Coffey, a new Conservative MP.  The exact wording of EDM 834 is:

EDMs rarely make much progress at Westminster, but if enough MPs sign, they can alert the government to a significant issue that needs further attention.  It is important to understand that EDM 834 is NOT an anti-abortion statement, rather it is a pro-woman declaration, since it seeks to protect women’s health.  Perhaps your MP would sign it – have you asked him or her?

3]  Late on the evening of 2 November, Nadine Dorries, MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, raised the same issue in an adjournment debate under the title, Termination of Pregnancy (Information Provided).  Ms Dorries declared, ‘When it comes to a decision of such magnitude, it is vital for women to receive information that is absolutely accurate and is given calmly, without coercion or a principled bias and, in particular, without political ideology.’  For the government, Anne Milton, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health, replied and concluded, ‘Having in place informed consent, appropriate counselling and the right support for women at this vulnerable time will ensure that we do not fail them for the future.’

4]  The very next day (3 November), a letter, signed by six consultant psychiatrists, was published in the Daily Telegraph.  They stated, ‘As consultant psychiatrists we strongly urge Parliament to introduce legislation ensuring that women seeking abortion are fully informed about the possible consequences of their abortion decision.’

This collision of concern has surfaced quite unexpectedly and spontaneously.  The hope is that the momentum generated will eventually lead to a change in the law and practice of abortion.  The Government has announced that it will publish a report on the mental health consequences of induced abortion in Spring 2011.  We will be waiting and watching.

Marie Stopes International (MSI)
Of the 195,743 abortions carried out during 2009 in England and Wales, 38% were performed in NHS hospitals and 56% under NHS contracts in approved independent sector places.  Thus 94% of these abortions were funded by the NHS, while the remaining 6% were funded privately.

One of the major NHS contractors providing abortions in the UK is Marie Stopes International (MSI).  Last year it terminated over 65,000 UK pregnancies.  And this is big business.  Last year in the UK, MSI made in excess of £36 million – £30 million of which was financed by UK taxpayers for its NHS agency work.

Profits from its UK business are invested in its overseas work. The ‘International’ part of its moniker encompasses 41 other countries, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.  In 2009, MSI performed 557,000 abortions worldwide.

MSI has come under heightened public scrutiny during the last few months.  Some harsh, albeit well-deserved, criticism has been levelled at its operations.

During June 2010, MSI funded those 30-second TV advertisements for its abortion clinics.  If those commercials were effective, presumably the UK abortion numbers will rise.  Is that what we want? Will girls (and boys) ever take sex seriously when the answer to a problem pregnancy is trivialised by an advert on TV claiming that the answer is just a phone call or a click away? Girls buying into the abortion industry is neither trifling nor nice.

Over a thousand outraged viewers complained.  During August, the Advertising Standards Authority dismissed those objections as groundless.  MSI counter-complained that the ‘A’ word was never mentioned and the commercials were for its ‘post-conception advice services’.

Nice lexical engineering, MSI.  Despite its website claim that, ‘We always support a woman's choice’, MSI can never be regarded as a genuine pregnancy advisory service.  It is an abortion provider, pure (though that is not the right word) and simple.  What alternatives to abortion do those nice people at MSI ‘advise’ and how do they ‘support’ pregnant girls and women?  Do they, for example, provide accommodation and practical help for the woman who makes the ‘choice’ to keep her baby?

There appears to be only one alternative at MSI.  If you want a posh abortion, you can go as a private client.  If you are up to 12 weeks pregnant, the cost will be £510.  From 19-24 weeks, the cost rises to £1720.  But the MSI website obligingly gives this advice to potential customers, ‘You can choose to pay by cash, Mastercard, Visa, Switch, Delta, Solo, or Electron.’  Now is that what they mean by ‘advice’, ‘choice’ and ‘support’?

MSI took another drubbing in August 2010.  It was revealed that MSI’s 430 employees, or ‘team members’ as they prefer to be called, at any of its nine centres across the UK, (as well as their partners and children), are entitled to free abortions as part of their staff benefits package.  Apparently this job ‘perk’ has been on offer for several years.  But that is not all.  Another of MSI’s employment benefits is a reduction in gym membership fees.  Abortion and bodily fitness do not sit together easily in the mind – harm and health in one package, a contract of blood and sweat.  It’s not right.  Clearly, MSI does not think, or act, like most people.

Why this long list of problems occurs more frequently in IVF babies remains uncertain.  Could it be that the parents already have such disorders, or are they, at least, genetically predisposed to such disorders?  Presumably the cause(s) of their infertility has some medical basis.  Another reason could be the increasing trend of IVF among older women with their ‘low quality’ ova.  Certainly IVF produces an inordinately high proportion (23% versus 1.5% of those naturally-conceived in the UK) of multiple pregnancies with their attendant problems of survival, low birth weights and poor health outcomes.  Or could it be that IVF’s unnatural physical and environmental manipulations, plus its fertility drug regimes, affect the developing child?

IVF also appears to have an unnatural demographic effect.  Researchers at the University of New South Wales examined 14,000 births from IVF clinics in Australia and New Zealand between 2002 and 2006.  Their recent report in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology came to a surprising conclusion.  Women using straightforward IVF procedures are more likely to have a boy than a girl. True, the swing is small – 56 boys per 100 births compared with the naturally-conceived ratio of 51 per 100.

Moreover, when intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), as opposed to standard IVF, is used, the ratio swings the other way, in favour of girls.  Nobody can explain these observations.  Though they are unlikely to upset national sex ratios, these results do represent a skew in the natural order of things.

South Korea Joins the Club
South Korea has recently expressed its desire to fall in with that bad lot of countries which have already legalised euthanasia. Doctors there will soon be allowed to remove life support from terminally-ill patients who have confirmed their wish to die.

The 18-member committee, which drew up the necessary guidelines, agreed that doctors could stop prolonged life-sustaining treatment, but only when patients had made prior written or oral statements.  So while voluntary euthanasia may soon be legalised in South Korea, the committee failed to agree about legalising non-voluntary euthanasia for mentally-disabled and other patients, who cannot express such a wish.

Herein lies the danger.  Legalisation of voluntary euthanasia is inevitably followed by the practice of the non-voluntary variety.  For proof of this assertion, look at the frightening example of Dutch law and the subsequent outcomes in Holland.

One of it first reports, issued to politicians in October, warned of the imminent danger if UK law were changed to fall in line with Oregon’s assisted suicide law.  This law was introduced in 1997 as the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, and is much admired by euthanasia proponents in the UK.  Living and Dying Well believes that a total of 1,052 deaths each year in the UK would be likely to follow.  Lord Carlile stated, ‘We are convinced that changing the law to allow these practices would pose serious dangers to large numbers of seriously ill or disabled people.’  Baroness Finlay, professor of palliative medicine at Cardiff University, said, ‘With the expert knowledge British doctors have to relieve suffering, there is no need for anyone in this country to die in pain or distress.’  There is no place, and no need, for euthanasia here.