The influential Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee released a report in April which is highly critical of the UK Government’s approach to imposing abortion on Northern Ireland.
The Committee highlighted a number of concerns with the new regulations.
Firstly, the consultation period was too short, and too close to the General Election and to Christmas ‘which [doesn’t] conform with best practice.’ There also wasn’t enough time allocated to scrutinise the Bill.
Further opposition
79% of the 21,000 who responded registered general opposition to any change to the established position. The Attorney General, John Larkin QC, was critical of disability provisions in the regulation which allow for abortions for disabilities including cleft lip, club foot and Down’s syndrome up to birth.
In other, abortion-related, news, Anna-Maria Tudor is taking the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to court after her abortion provider failed to inform her that a baby at 23 weeks’ gestation may feel pain and that her baby had a chance of surviving outside the womb.
The current NICE guidelines do not require women to be informed that an unborn child might suffer pain during an abortion. Tudor said she deeply regrets having the abortion after learning that her unborn child may have felt pain while being aborted.
Current guidance for abortion providers relies on a 2010 review by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) into foetal awareness. In the review the RCOG claims that the unborn baby is in an unconscious state and does not reach consciousness until birth. They have been criticised for this conclusion being based on the evidence from only one paper from 1986, an experiment on sheep foetuses exposed to low oxygen levels.
Currently, the use of pain relief during an abortion in the UK is not required by law or suggested in official guidelines. This in itself is contradicted by the standard NHS practice of giving painkillers to unborn babies receiving surgery in the womb for spina bifida.
New evidence
But two medical researchers, including a ‘pro-choice’ British pain expert who used to think there was no chance unborn babies could feel pain before 24 weeks, say recent studies strongly suggest the assumption is incorrect (en March 2020). They argue that women considering an abortion at this stage of pregnancy should be told about the pain their unborn baby could experience while being terminated.
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