Speaking at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority conference on 13th October, Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo MP spoke of her enthusiasm for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which reaches third reading and report stage in the Commons on 22nd October. The Minister stressed to the IVF and embryo research regulatory body that the law must keep pace with scientific and medical developments, and that services need ‘proportionate’ regulation. She rightly called for a law that is both ‘right for science and right for society’.

As a former Director of Policy and Communications at the HFEA, I remember the frustration of scientists and clinicians who were unable to pursue rational and ethical lines of work because of the prohibitions of an overly prescriptive and out-of-date law. This HFE Bill is necessary, if not overdue, to set the legislative framework necessary for fertility research and treatment in the twenty-first century.

The same frustrations are shared by the doctors and nurses striving to provide a modern, evidence-based abortion service as part of family planning care in the UK. The 1990 HFE Act amended the 1967 Abortion Act, shaping the manner in which abortion services are currently provided. Ungainly as it may seem to yoke these two areas of legislation together, new clauses to the HFE Bill on abortion are appropriate and necessary to make sure that abortion services, too, can keep pace with scientific and medical developments and are regulated proportionately. The proposed new clauses to the HFE Bill affecting abortion care are primarily:

▪ Removal of the need for two doctors’ signatures to give permission before an abortion can be carried out- instead abortion would be provided on the basis of informed patient consent and in their best interests, as with all other medical procedures. (Evan Harris MP et al, New Clauses 1 & 13)
▪ Allowing nurses and midwives to carry out abortions where appropriate (Frank Dobson MP et al, New Clause 2 & 14)
▪ Allowing abortions to be carried out in GPs surgeries and Family Planning Clinics where appropriate (Jacqui Lait MP et al, New Clauses 7 & 10)
▪ Home administration of misoprostol (the second dose of medication when undergoing early medical abortion (Christine McCafferty MP et al, New Clause 9)
▪ Preventing misleading advertising by pregnancy counselling services to require clarity in advertising where they won’t refer for abortion and don’t provide treatment (John Bercow MP et al, New Clause 11)
▪ Clarifying that the legal right of conscientious objection does not also extend to the non-provision of contraception on this ground (Evan Harris MP et al, New Clause 12)
▪ Extending the Abortion Act 1967 to Northern Ireland (Diane Abbott MP et al, New Clause 30)

Abortion, as a solution to the serious public health problem of unintended pregnancy, is very much a part of modern society. No woman ever wants, or sets out to have an abortion, but women want, and need abortion to be there as an option for them when our contraception fails, or we fail to use it effectively.