In a clandestine consultation, buried away without notification or announcement, the UK Department of Health (DoH) seeks to subvert the 1967 Abortion Act and remove the requirement for a woman considering termination to consult a doctor, it was reported on January 22.
Furthermore, the procedure could be carried out by a nurse and even outside a clinic ‘to be in the privacy of their own home for the expulsion’.
Significant change
Speaking on behalf of the British Parliament’s Cross-Party Working Group on Human Dignity, Jim Dobbin MP stated: ‘These changes mark a further undermining of the safeguards of the 1967 Act and represent a significant change to the law. But rather than have this debated and decided by Parliament, the new measures would take the form of guidelines, thus bypassing due scrutiny. The original Act clearly stated a requirement for two consenting doctors, well informed of the personal circumstances in question; yet for decades, medical practitioners have turned a blind eye to the law, readily pre-signing abortion consents for patients they have never met, and now the DoH is actively encouraging such malpractice’.
