Abortion: no medical professional should be immune from the law

Doctors are not above the law: if there is proof that they have broken it, it is not unreasonable to assume consequences. And but when it comes to alleged infractions involving abortion, the authorities can be strangely reluctant to act. In 2012, a Telegraph investigation exposed two doctors ready to finish a pregnancy on the grounds of gender. Following an 18-month investigation, the Crown Prosecution Support agreed that there was enough proof to deliver charges and safe a prosecution. But it refused to proceed on the grounds of “public interest”. It is achievable that the CPS had a political motive: that it made the decision the situation was just also culturally delicate to touch.

But historical past is repeating itself. As a outcome of The Telegraph’s gender selection investigation, it was exposed that dozens of medical doctors had pre-signed abortion forms without understanding something about the girls involved – in defiance of the 1967 Abortion Act’s insistence that two doctors offer consent “in excellent faith”. The Basic Medical Council (GMC) described the practice as “wrong” and ordered the doctors to “obey the law”. But, extremely, it declined to hold fitness to practise hearings towards them on the grounds that they had only engaged in “common practice”. Niall Dickson, chief executive of the GMC, added that, of program, widespread practice “does not alter the obligation on doctors and other professionals to obey the law”. In which case, why will the GMC not proceed with hearings?

Now, a annoyed group of MPs has written to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to demand a criminal investigation. The Labour MP Frank Area tends to make the wise observation that what is below debate here is not the rights and wrongs of abortion but just the principle that the law ought to be both obeyed or, if it is obsolete, rewritten. What is inexcusable is a group of pros determining for themselves what constitutes criminal behaviour and declining to act.

This entire episode smacks of medical doctors defending their own. Or else they have a fear about addressing abortion-based troubles since they are so controversial. But such squeamishness is unethical and illogical. If physicians were caught breaking the law on the matter of, say, organ transplants, action would be swift and public. There is no reason why anything related to abortion must be so politely brushed underneath the carpet. Regardless of whether one particular agrees with legalised abortion or not, the way a termination is conducted must be in full accordance with the law of the land. No medical doctor need to operate above that essential principle.

Abortion: no medical professional should be immune from the law