Sharron Davies: ‘Scrap pills-by-post scheme to protect women’

Pro-abortion Peer Baroness Davies of Devonport has explained why she backs the reintroduction of in-person consultations for abortions.

The former Olympic swimming silver medallist said she has co-sponsored a Crime and Policing Bill amendment by Baroness Stroud to end home DIY abortions in order to “protect women”.

The ‘pills-by-post’ scheme, which removed in-person consultations for women to receive abortion pills, was introduced during the Covid pandemic.

Tragic consequences

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Lady Davies branded the pills-by-post scheme as an example of “powerful drugs being too casually dispensed to women by the state in the name of ideology, from which tragic consequences have already unfolded”.

She explained: “being pro-choice does not excuse jeopardising safety or allowing a ‘Wild West’ of abortion pills, where pills can too easily fall into the hands of abusers coercing abortions, traffickers covering up abuse or women whose pregnancies are approaching full term”.

The former Olympian added: “The practical effect of the scheme is that women at any stage of pregnancy can get hold of abortion pills by misleading abortion providers on the phone about their gestation, either mistakenly or deliberately as in the case of Carla Foster, who was sent abortion pills by BPAS after pretending to be seven weeks pregnant when actually around 33 weeks.”

She said: “Reintroducing in-person medical consultations for women seeking abortions is not about reducing access to abortion but ensuring safeguarding and best practice.”

Abortion up to birth

Lady Davies added: “The backdrop to the amendment Baroness Stroud and I have brought forward with other colleagues is the proposal in the Crime and Policing Bill that would mean it would no longer be illegal for a woman to administer her own abortion at any stage of pregnancy, right up to birth, for any reason”.

She said she opposes this move, noting: “Britain already has the most extreme time limit in Western Europe – our 24-week limit is double the average in European Union countries and beyond the point when some babies now survive outside the womb”.

“Effectively permitting unsupervised abortions away from a clinical setting late in pregnancy, using pills designed for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, would put women’s lives at risk.”

She argued that “being pro-choice has limits; it does not mean supporting abortion up to birth, so that viable babies (including girls) can have their lives ended in the womb without legal repercussion, even at full term”.