Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)

Dr Alison Wright, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, has written to Peers protesting that women may continue to face police investigations and criminal charges solely for ending their own pregnancy unless this clause is supported. She, speaking on behalf of the college, makes no distinction whatever between the abortion of a viable child at full term and a first-trimester termination. Indeed, the infant who without the intervention of lethal drugs would be fully a living person at that stage, if born, is completely unmentioned. It is as if this is unmentionable. Dr Wright describes the women concerned as being at the most vulnerable times in their lives. That may be true, but the most vulnerable and defenceless person here is the unborn viable child. Obviously, it is deeply distressing, as we have heard, for the mother to be questioned by the police in the aftermath of an illegal abortion. This should be done with compassion and sensitivity, but the police cannot act as if nothing has happened. Clause 208 also endangers women by removing the current legal deterrent against administering an abortion away from a clinical setting right up to birth. Women may be incentivised to perform their own life-threatening abortion late in pregnancy. This is particularly the case given how easily women can obtain abortion pills through the pills by post scheme, beyond the legal limit and without a reliable gestational age check. These pills are not meant to be used after the 10th week of pregnancy for a very good reason. I encourage noble Lords to support Amendment 425 from the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, which would reinstate mandatory in-person medical consultations and abolish the pills by post scheme, which was started during Covid lockdowns and should have been rescinded after the pandemic, as was originally intended. More than 1,000 medical professionals have written to us opposing Clause 208, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, former president of the British Medical Association, for her support for my amendment. One letter I received pointed out that—