Abortion law reform in Britain 1964-2003: A personAl Account by David paintin Hon FFSRH MB ChB FRCOG Emeritus Reader in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of London Abortion law reform in Britain 1964-2003: A personAl Account by David paintin Hon FFSRH MB ChB FRCOG Emeritus Reader in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of London Published by British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas), 20 Timothys Bridge Road, Stratford Enterprise Park, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire CV37 9BF May 2015 © British Pregnancy Advisory Service 2 contents Acknowledgements 5 Foreword. By Ann Furedi, chief executive, British pregnancy Advisory service 6 chapter 1. Forming an opinion, 1955 – 1963 8 Providing induced abortion in London, 1963 – 1967 10 Becoming a member of the Abortion Reform Association (ALRA) 11 chapter 2. lord silkin’s Medical termination of pregnancy Bills, 1965 – 1966 13 Lord Silkin’s First Bill 13 Planning amendments for the Committee Stage 16 The fall of the Bill and an analysis of its shortcomings 20 Lord Silkin’s Second Bill 21 chapter 3. supporting David steel’s Abortion Bill, 1966 – 1968 25 Preparing for the Committee Stage 29 The December crisis 34 Comments on the amendments tabled for the committee stage of the Abortion Bill 38 The role of ALRA, and the medico-legal advisors 44 Standing Committee F: January to April 1967 47 ALRA accepts the aims of the Steel Bill 48 The Steel Bill in the Lords 51 Final approval by the House of Commons 52 chapter 4. Implementing the Act 53 The Abortion Regulations 1968 53 The recognition of approved premises 54 The beneficial and harmful effects of the extended list of assurances 56 Provision by the NHS 57 Abortion provision at the Samaritan Hospital, 1963 – 1972 58 Specialised NHS services that separated abortion provision from routine gynaecology 59 Abortion “counselling” 61 Making abortion available free of charge 62 The private provision of abortion 65 chapter 5: the origins of the pregnancy advisory services 66 Birmingham Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) 66 Pregnancy Advisory Service (PAS) 67 Marie Stopes International (MSI) 72 NHS provision in Scotland 74 3 chapter 6. Birth control campaign and Birth control trust 75 Birth Control Campaign (BCC) 75 Birth Control Trust (BCT) 76 chapter 7. parliamentary reaction to the effects of the Abortion Act 80 Problems with provision by private clinics, 1968 – 1971 80 Abortion (Amendment) Bill (15/7/69). Ten-Minute Rule Bill: Norman St John Stevas 81 Abortion (Amendment) Bill (13/2/70). Private Member’s Bill: Bryant Godwin Irvine 81 The Lane Committee, 1971 – 1974 82 Abortion (Amendment) Bill 1975. Private Member’s Bill: James White 84 The Select Committee(s) on the Abortion (Amendment) Bill, 1975 – 1976 87 Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Health, report on measures already taken to control abuse of the Abortion Act 88 Abortion (Amendment) Bill 1977. Private Member’s Bill: William Benyon MP 88 Abortion (Amendment) Bill 1977. Ten-Minute Rule Bill: Sir Bernard Braine MP 89 Abortion (Amendment) Bill 1979. Private Member’s Bill: Mr John Corrie MP 89 Abortion (Amendment) Bill 1980. Ten-Minute Rule Bill: Mr David Alton MP 92 Abortion (Amendment) Bill 1987 (28 Oct 1987): Mr David Alton MP 92 chapter 8. lord Houghton improves the Abortion Act 1987-90 94 Infant Life (Preservation) Bill 1987 (HL); Second Reading 28 Jan 1987. Private Member’s Bill: the Bishop of Birmingham (Hugh Montefiore) 94 Select Committee on the 1929 Infant Life (Preservation) Act, 1987 95 Abortion (Amendment) Bill (2) [HL]. Private Member’s Bill: Lord Houghton 96 The amendment of the Abortion Act within the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill 100 The final debate in the House of Lords: 18 October 1990 106 The triumph of Lord Houghton and the defeat of Life and SPUC 107 Abortion Act 1967. Full text as amended in 1990 109 4 Acknowledgements This book would not have been written without enthusiastic support and encouragement from Marge Berer and Toni Belfield. I am very grateful to David Steel, Dilys Cossey, and Diane Munday for their comments on my first draft and for identifying my errors of fact and omission. The book is my personal account and interpretation of the events that made legal abortion available in Great Britain – I have cited the sources whenever I have attributed comments to other people. Special thanks are due to my publishers, British Pregnancy Advisory Service, and especially to Ann Furedi, who made this possible. The text has benefited greatly from the editing skills of Jennie Bristow. But I would not have been able to give so much of my time to the pro-choice cause without the willing support of my wife. For the past 50 years Avril has accepted my frequent absence from home to attend committees or lecture in various part of the United Kingdom, recognising that supporting women’s right to regulate their fertility is an essential part of my life. She is my loyal and loving partner – my essential other half. 5 Foreword. By Ann Furedi, Chief Executive, British Pregnancy Advisory Service All women owe a debt to David Paintin for his work with parliamentarians to achieve a liberal abortion law, and with his profession to increase abortion’s acceptability and promote innovative good practice. He was one of the group from the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA), led by (Lady) Vera Houghton and including Diane Munday, Madeleine Simms and Alastair Service, that supported David Steel (now Lord Steel of Aikwood) during the parliamentary debates that resulted in the Abortion Act of 1967. The use of early medical abortion is now so widespread that it is easy to forget how so many providers in Britain dismissed ‘abortion pill’ as impractical when, in 1988, it was first licensed in France. It was David Paintin, and his long-term collaborator, Dilys Cossey – as Chair and Director of the pro-choice charity Birth Control Trust – who organised the first national meeting to draw attention to mifepristone and so established the framework for the following debate and service developments. As a former Director of Birth Control Trust and current chief executive of British Pregnancy Advisory Service, I owe my own extra debt of gratitude to David Paintin, since he led me to change career, leaving journalism to work in abortion care and joining the group of provider advocates he has inspired. I first met David in 1990 when, working as a feature writer for a women’s glossy magazine, I was commissioned to write a supplement on abortion. Knowing next to nothing, I sought a doctor to talk me through the clinical issues and was told that Mr Paintin, a consultant at London’s Samaritan hospital, was the man I should see. He agreed, if I could meet him after his operating list. And so on an agreed day, at an agreed time, I waited and waited and waited while Mr Paintin completed a very late running list. He explained, by way of apology, that sometimes more time is needed; that an operating list is not like a factory where things can be timed precisely; and that women deserve the best care that can be given, even when other people (such as myself) were inconvenienced. Despite what must have already been an exhausting day, he talked to me for almost three hours and at the end of our discussion produced a folder of notes that he had prepared for me in advance, to help me describe procedures accurately. It has always mattered to David that everything about abortion – whether it be its history, the law, clinical practice or the reason it is necessary – is told truthfully and accurately, without sensational hype or sanitising. 6 We see the past through the eyes of the present and so it is easy to interpret what happened then according to how we see things now. The trends that influence contemporary society shape what we look for in history, and this makes it hard not to shape history in the image of ‘now’. There has been a strong tendency for this revisionism in our discussions of the abortion law. Often the story of abortion reform is couched in terms of an emerging women’s rights movement battling for sexual liberation but, while it is true that ‘free abortion on demand’ became a central demand of the Women’s Liberation Movement, that was not until the 1970s. The reforms that led to the Abortion Act 1967 were the result of work in earlier times and different ways of thinking by men and women who, like David Paintin, did not see themselves as firebrands or radicals of any description. Many of the men who worked alongside David were of a very conservative disposition, wishing to end the increasing numbers of abortions provided outside official medical practice and limit its provision to what they saw as proper circumstances. Many of the women, more “blue-stocking” than “bra-burning”, were concerned by the inability of poverty-stricken women to raise their children responsibly. The abortion reform movement, as described by these memoirs, is located by David in the traditions of public health and social responsibility, an increasing orientation of the clinical profession towards a concern with general well-being rather than simply physical infirmity, and, over recent decades, in reliance on ‘evidence’ and best practice. David Paintin’s memoirs of the struggle for abortion law reform have great value to those of us who want to understand the context in which the current law and regulations have been constructed. Those of us who seek to influence the future need to understand why past was as it was, and why the present is as it is.