By Dave Andrusko
Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley
It would be difficult to exaggerate how cushy the abortion industry in Britain has had it for more than 40 years. So it comes as absolutely no surprise that coming after public exposes, the two leading abortion providers– the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes—are using friendly media outlets to trot out the line that abortion is becoming “politicized.”
What has caused them to talk about political “witch hunts”?
Less than two weeks ago, the London Telegraph revealed that abortionists at many British abortion clinics were routinely falsifying their paperwork. Although abortion is common in Britain, it still requires the approval of two doctors. What the Telegraph found was that as many as 20% of abortionists were pre-signing the consent forms in bulk. This lead an outraged Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, to vow a crackdown. He said,
“I was appalled. Because if it happens, it is pretty much people engaging in a culture of both ignoring the law and trying to give themselves the right to say that although Parliament may have said this, we believe in abortion on demand.”
And this came on the heels of an investigate report that found that some abortionists were routinely approving illegal sex-selective abortions. Some awfully dirty laundry was being hung out in public.
But this minimal level of scrutiny represented a “politicisation of abortion provision,” according to a spokesperson for the BPAS, and “is likely to make it even harder to recruit a future generation of abortion doctors who are prepared to provide the care that a third of women will need in the course of their lifetimes.”
Or the clinical director of one abortion partnership told The Guardian: “Of course, there is a lot of stigma around abortion, both having them and to a much lesser extent, even doing them. But from the feedback that I have had, I really do think that the question has to be asked: what impact is this increasingly negative politicisation going to have on future providers of abortion care? Is it going to put doctors and nurses off becoming involved in this work?”
A more likely conclusion future abortionists might draw is that the happy days of do-what-you-want-and-never-mind-the-law might be at an end. But that absolutely minimal threshold—already too much for the abortion industry–will come to pass only if the government is not intimidated into retreat.
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