Libby Purves joins the abortion debate

A teenager's brain

Maybe Murdoch has decided to ditch quality and go for sensationalism. Whatever the reason, The Times has been unashamedly going down market for years. It increasingly panders to the middle-class need for journalistic pap without the attendant shame of being seen reading something headed by the words “Daily Mail”.

A few days ago we were subjected to an extraordinary outburst from Caitlin Moran and today we find Libby Purves in hot pursuit as she jumps on the abortion band-wagon.

Caitlin Moran’s article was not to be taken seriously. She is capable of much better as evidenced by her wonderfully witty article yesterday in which she described her sex education.

But now Libby Purves seems to have taken leave of her senses

A crisis brought on by our selfish desires
Doctors’ opting-out of abortions was inevitable
An unprecedented number of doctors are opting out of terminating pregnancies, and the NHS struggles to cope. Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, says: “Unless we can motivate doctors to train in abortion, we may face a situation in five years’ time in which women’s access to abortion is severely restricted.” Some doctors, she said crossly, take a “naive view” that there is now no excuse for accidental pregnancies, and think it low-status work.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

A few doctors have always declined to do abortions on conscientious grounds, and it is their absolute right so to do. For the rest, it is more accident than design. When Dr Crippen was a gynaecology SHO, there were a few abortions on every operating list. They were passed down the food chain from consultant to registrar to SHO. The second thing my registrar taught me to do (after suturing episiotomies was abortions). "Right, Crippen the rest of these are yours, I’m going for coffee. Give me a shout if you need anything."

Nowadays most abortions are done outside NHS hospitals in private clinics working under contract to the NHS. So juniors often do not get the chance to “opt out” of the work. It is not there in the first place.

You cannot “motivate” doctors to do abortions by any means other than financial. No one enjoys doing them. Some are more troubled than others by them and no one seeks them out.

So who are the abortionists? Mostly trainee gynaecologists moonlighting for extra cash and, of course, the ever abused foreign doctors many of whom may be highly experienced but cannot get mainstream gynaecology jobs in NHS hospitals.

The increasing number of refuseniks is caused chiefly, say campaigners, by the cut in junior doctors’ hours. This means they no longer have to train in everything, but can pick and choose. And who, given a choice, would not gladly opt out of the one task in which doctors end healthy life?

No.

“Training” to do abortions does not take long. Any gynaecologist who can do an old fashioned D & C can do abortions. Training? Ha! Ha! See one, do one, teach one.

This does mean that occasionally there are problems – it is easy to perforate a uterus – and some of the abortionists are not as experienced as consultants and thus may perforate the uterus more often. That’s life. Can you really imagine Lord Winston popping in to the local Marie Stopes Clinic for an afternoon's abortions?

You do not find consultant gynaecologists doing abortion lists.

Richard Warren, of the royal college, told a newspaper yesterday that in the past abortion was “an accepted part of the workload” , but that it always was “difficult and upsetting work”, so more and more doctors now opt out. Another consultant said: “You get no thanks for it . . . who admits to friends at a dinner party that they are an abortionist?” She, and others, want it put in a core curriculum.

It is not difficult work. It is boring, repetitive, tedious unchallenging work. Upsetting? Maybe for some, but they will not be doing them anyway. Delivering babies requires more skills than performing abortions. We let midwives loose on pregnant women, so why do we not train up some abortion-nurse-specialists? That would solve the manpower problem and would save money to boot.

It is at this stage in the article that Libby takes leave of her senses:

These young doctors have a point: if they agree to do abortions they agree to do all of them, not just those undertaken for deep, serious, heartbreaking reasons. They must serve not only the rape victims, the abused, the desperate, the weak-minded, the sick and women who might be so damaged by birth that the welfare of their existing children would be torpedoed. No: once they’re signed up for it they must also serve the silly, the selfish, the careless and thoughtless.

“The silly, the selfish, the careless and thoughtless”

No, Libby, you cannot go there. If you do not believe in abortions, say so. What you are saying here is that you believe in some abortions provided always that you (you, Libby) think they are justified.

Read Emily’s tale again. A stupid indiscretion by an immature teenager.

“For your stupidity, Emily, I sentence you to give birth to a child against your will. Sentence to last eighteen yearsl with no remission. And may God have mercy on your soul." (Ms Justice Purves)

Well, on the unwanted child’s soul actually.

The old mantra of abortion campaigners — “No woman does this without deep thought and heartbreaking need” — is way out of date.

It is not a mantra. It may be overstated but, in my experience (yes, yes, I know I am a middle-aged male) the majority of women who have abortions do agonise about it, and a lot of them need support. And I have met far more women who have had, or requested, abortions than Libby Purves. Or Caitlin Moran. Or Emily, for that matter.

Plenty do it irritably, without a pang, after a drunken fumble with a stranger.

I hate that. Yes, women do have abortions after a “drunken fumble with a stranger” and most of them are enormously relieved to have the abortion and put it behind them. But do not trivialise their experience. It is the right decision for them, but that does not meant that it was necessarily an easy decision. And Libby, is a drunken conception going to be a bar to abortions?

Plenty do it because the time isn’t “right” for them, even by a factor of half a year.

Not plenty, Libby, but some. And who is to decide when the time is “right”other than the woman herself.

Even some mothers do it, as Caitlin Moran startlingly wrote last week, after less agonising than they put into choosing new kitchen worktops

Agreed. Caitlin going OTT

They know that the spirit of the 1967 Act is light years away from the 2007 practice: they know that without ever having debated or voted on it, we effectively have abortion on demand. Easier just to say no, and work on life instead. It would have been better, perhaps, if the spirit and letter of the 1967 Act (which I supported) had been more robustly followed, and couples given more reason to be very, very careful.

Every experienced lawyer in Britain knew that the abortion act sanctioned abortion on demand. It may or may not have been the enactment of David Steel’s spirit, but the “letter” of the law is unequivocal.

“The continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman”

Having a baby is always more risky, physically and/or mentally, than having an abortion. Ergo, abortion on demand.

But we should admit honestly that the change in medical education is only the final straw. We did this to ourselves with our worship of sexual impetuosity, our cowardly right-on attitudes to anything involving women, and our dubious backdoor introduction of casual, lifestyle abortion. We did this to avoid one misery, and brought on another.

There has been no change in medical education. There has been a change in venue for most abortions, meaning that it is easy for doctors not to do them.

• Our “worship of sexual impetuosity”
• Our “cowardly right on attitudes to anything involving women
• Our dubious backdoor introduction of casual, lifestyle abortion.
• There is, thank God, nothing back-door (or did Libby mean back-street) about abortions.

Oh dear, Libby, have you been holidaying in Tennessee? The message now from some educators in parts of America is that it's "worth waiting for." Sadly, as the nurses in Blount County, Tenessee are finding, most teenagers are off message. They are not waiting.

"The problem with teen sex in Blount County: Is there a problem with teen sex in Blount County? Most definitely, yes.

Blount County healthcare professionals (physicians and nurses) and public-health officials are alarmed at the large number of teens in this county who suffer the consequences of teen sexual behavior each year. Our county’s teens have a very high rate of problems arising from sexual behavior, and this rate is increasing."

Strange, is it not, that the "Right to Life" brigade are against abortion, but also against contraception and sex-education for children.

Libby Purves - would she approve?

Whether or not you teach young children about sex, by the time they are teenagers they think about it constantly. They need a road map. The way to reduce the abortion rate is to improve sex education. Children need to be taught about sex in primary school. They need to know that mummy and daddy have sexual intercourse, and they need to know why and how mummy manages not to be pregnant all the time. We need to throw away all those ludicrous “Janet and John” drawings of allegedly naked men and women whose genitalia have been removed. We need to ditch all that codswallop about birds and bees and storks. We need to teach young women not that abortions are shameful, but that they can and should be avoided. We need to stop selling Alcopops to teenagers. We need to look at our own drinking habits and make sure they can be safely emulated by our children.

What we must not do is punish women who have unwanted pregnancies by making them justify their abortions to Libby Purves.