John McTernan: Time to reclaim a promised power

For nearly 40 years abortion has been one of the most divisive social issues in American politics. In 1972, the US Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Roe v Wade that abortion was a constitutional right. Ever since, the American right, and in particular conservative Christians, have been seeking to reverse the decision. Being “pro-life” – as it is oddly termed, since such people often also favour the death penalty – is an essential attribute for Republican presidential candidates.

Up till now, here in Britain we have had a very different settlement. David Steel’s pioneering Private Members’ Bill that produced the 1967 Abortion Act has provided a relatively stable framework. There have been skirmishes, but no real assault on the principle of a woman’s right to choose. Now, though, it looks as if America’s culture wars are coming to Britain.

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries and Labour’s Frank Field are tabling an amendment to the Health and Social Care Act – the government’s huge NHS reform legislation. They are not making a direct assault on abortion rights. They have learned an important lesson from the US conservatives: an attempt to repeal abortion law completely will fail. The route to success is to disguise your ambitions and to seek to reverse the legislation you oppose step by step. Finally, you should start with a proposal that seems common sense and mainstream.

Dorries is the main spokesperson for the changes. Clearly, she and Frank Field realised that a man arguing for restricting access to abortion – as the former Liberal MP David Alton used to, and as Catholic Church leaders still do – is not a good look.

And her pitch is straightforward: there should be a broader range of counselling available to women considering abortions. On the face of it, this is not unreasonable. But dig a little deeper and you can see what she’s really doing.

Before you change a system you need to identify that there’s a real problem. Otherwise you end up with the classic political manoeuvre – it’s fixed, so let’s break it. So is something going wrong?

Most abortion counselling is provided by two charities, Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS). The Department of Health, which regulates them, says they provide a high standard of counselling service. So Dorries has come up with a somewhat quixotic objection: those who advise on a service shouldn’t provide the service, otherwise there’s a conflict of interest.

She claims this principle is established in law, and cites for an example pension legislation which separates provision from financial advice. There is obviously a good reason for this – complex financial products can have very different costs and benefits, and a pension provider has a vested interest in selling to you. But applied to the NHS it is a nonsense. The logical implication of the Dorries/Field position is that the consultant you see in a hospital couldn’t operate on you because of a conflict of interest.

But, of course, a Chinese wall between counselling and provision is not the aim of the amendment, nor is an increased plurality of advice. On Monday, Radio 4’s The World at One had an item about abortion. Lucy Cavendish, a journalist, talked openly about her experience and the high quality counselling she got from Marie Stopes. She added that the support she got was matched by what other women had also received.

Nadine Dorries refused to engage with this and revealingly said: “I don’t have the figure in front of me but I can guarantee you that 15 years ago the incidence of abortion was far, far fewer than it is today. Today we have 200,000 abortions carried out per year and we have more abortions than any other country in Western Europe. I think 15 years ago the figure may have been around 40,000 per year.”

A five-fold increase in 15 years? That sounds alarming. If true, it would give even the most ardent feminist pause for thought. But the facts are easily checked.

The House of Commons Library has helpfully produced one of its authoritative research papers on abortion statistics. This shows a number of things. It points out that the most useful figure for understanding and comparing trends is the number of abortions per 1,000 women. In 2010 – the most recent period for which there are statistics – this stood at 17.5 per 1,000. Admittedly the figure has doubled since 1970, but on the other hand it has broadly remained static for the last 15 years.

Why, then, has Nadine Dorries so seriously misrepresented the actual figure? It’s surely not stupidity. Dorries may be a maverick and a character, but she’s nobody’s fool. She is deliberately misleading the public because she wants to create a moral panic. Her aim this time? At the very least to slice some funding from Marie Stopes and BPAS to reduce their capacity and ideally, to fund agencies or advisers who persuade women not to have abortions. She has spoken elsewhere of deterring up to 60,000 abortions each year. Dorries wants to get a foot in the door this year, but she will be back year after year chipping away at women’s right to choose.

Of course, this would all be irrelevant in Scotland if the parliament had the same powers today as the Scottish Assembly was promised in 1979. Then, control over abortion would have been just a part of the devolution of health. In 1997, Labour was more nervous – or perhaps more feminist. There were fears that the Scottish Parliament would tighten access, so the powers were reserved.

It is interesting that this is one power you never hear the Scottish Government demanding, though it will fall to an independent Scotland. There are undoubtedly tensions in the SNP high command on the issue. Alex Salmond has sent signals of having a socially conservative position. But I don’t see why fear of the First Minister should deter the Scottish Parliament. It is surely absurd that such a paternalistic withholding of powers should be sustained – particularly, given the indications that the Christian right see the Dorries/Field amendment as the first skirmish in a major battle.

Time for the Scottish Parliament to demand the powers to legislate on abortion. Surely no-one’s scared that MSPs are too weak to stand up to our own Tartan Taleban?