Seeing baby born alive after abortion “changed me profoundly,” says former MP Nadine Dorries

A former high-profile MP and former Secretary of State, Nadine Dorries, has advocated for an end to abortion ‘pills by post’ in Britain – opening up on the moment she witnessed an aborted baby gasping for breath following a late-term abortion.

The former nurse opened up on how, at aged 18, she witnessed a baby survive an abortion performed at 27 weeks in an op-ed penned for The Daily Mail.

“When I was a young nurse of 18, I experienced something that changed me profoundly,” the ex-politician wrote.

“My months on the gynaecological ward had been the happiest and most rewarding of my short career — until one day, when I was asked to help during the termination of a pregnancy at 27 weeks.

“Back then, the legal limit for abortion was 28 weeks. This was reduced to 24 in 1990.

“The expectant mother, who was only 16, had been injected in her uterine cavity with the hormone prostaglandin. Several excruciating hours later, the foetus — a little boy — was delivered.”

Dorries recalls being asked to stay with the child who was “gasping for breath,” continuing:

“He was dropped in a bedpan, and the ward sister handed him to me, saying: ‘Take this into the sluice room and leave it there until I come. Stay with it.’

‘A TINY BABY BOY, BLINKING, GASPING FOR BREATH’

“As I closed the sluice-room door, I removed the paper covering from the bedpan. I have never forgotten what I saw. There lay a tiny baby boy, blinking, covered in mucus, blood and amniotic fluid, gasping for breath, his little arms and legs twitching.”

“I was shocked to my core. Weeping, I rocked the bedpan in my arms. I wanted to pick him up but he was so small, I didn’t know how to. After a minute or so, I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I was about to run for help when I heard the ward sister’s unmistakable footsteps approaching.”

The former Conservative Party MP said that the child stopped breathing after seven minutes, saying that she told the ward sister the child had been alive – which she denied.

“As she took the bedpan from me, he stopped breathing. I checked my fob watch: a little boy had been born, lived and died in the space of seven minutes. Mine was the only face he saw, my sobs the only sounds he heard,” Dorries writes in the piece.

“Distressed, I turned to the ward sister and said: ‘He was breathing.’ Through her dark-rimmed glasses she glared at me, saying: ‘No he wasn’t. You didn’t see that.’

“I was stunned. He was breathing, I insisted. She looked embarrassed and muttered: ‘The mother probably got her dates wrong. Maybe she was more than 27 weeks.’

“At this, I was almost inconsolable. I had become a nurse to help people — not to facilitate killing babies who might have lived. The sister snapped: ‘If you want to be a nurse, you had better toughen up fast. Get out.’ I ran from the sluice room.

 

Credit: UK government / Creative Commons

“I can’t bring myself to tell you how she disposed of the body of that tiny newborn,” she said.

Dorries, who says she has “always believed in safe, legal abortions,” goes on to describe the experience as “horrendous,” saying that it made her appreciate what a “complicated and emotionally fraught issue” abortion is.

The author and former politician went on to reference amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill, tabled by Labour MPs Dianna Johnson and Stella Creasy, which would legalise abortion “until the very point of birth” for women using abortion “pills by post” at home, a method introduced during lockdown which has been made permanent in both the UK and Ireland.

Dorries, who, as a Conservative backbencher, introduced several unsuccessful private member’s bills, which included attempts to reduce the abortion time limit, changes to rules regarding counselling for women, and advocacy for sexual abstinence in sex education, said she was given the assurance by Matt Hancock that pills by post would be temporary.

“Doctors working in clinics still have to abide by the 24-week legal limit. But, increasingly, that’s almost a side issue: ‘abortifacient’ pills ordered online and taken at home now account for 87 per cent of terminations in Britain — up 40 per cent since 2011,” Dorries penned.

“Until the pandemic, a woman seeking a termination had to attend a clinic and undergo an ultrasound to confirm how far along she was. She would then take the first pill under supervision in the clinic, and the second pill at home, where the foetus would be delivered.

“I was a health minister during the pandemic, and was involved in the intense discussions about the ethics and legality of ‘pills by post’. We didn’t want expectant mothers to become lawbreakers in their own homes, and we were depending on women to tell the truth about when they had become pregnant: not just for the sake of their foetus but for their own physical and mental safety as well,” she said, adding:

“Matt Hancock, of course, was Health Secretary during Covid. He gave me his absolute assurance that pills by post would be temporary and that, after the pandemic, we would revert to the safer method.”

Pills by post were made legal by Sajid Javid following Hancock’s resignation in June 2021. Dorries went on to reference the case of Carla Foster, who aborted her eight-month-old unborn child using abortion pills in her home, receiving a 28-month prison sentence.

“I warned at the time that women would be prosecuted for ordering pills by post when their pregnancies were too advanced to qualify for them. And so it has come to pass," Dorries, a mother of three, continued.

“In May 2020, Carla Foster, who was in a vulnerable situation, obtained the pills at home while eight months pregnant. Last year, she received a 28-month prison sentence, reduced to 14 months suspended on appeal,” Dorries wrote.

“Predictably, there has been a surge in similar investigations — and not only of women who have lied about how far along they were, but also of women who have suffered miscarriages at home and found themselves subjected to harsh and intrusive questioning,” she said.

She also references the rise in prosecutions for late-term abortions in Britain. While there were three prosecutions between 1967 – when the Abortion Act came into force – and 2022, in less than two years, at least six women have been prosecuted.

“No doubt [Stella Creasy] and her Labour colleague Diana Johnson believe their case has been strengthened by the recent rise in prosecutions. But the truth is that they and other feminists have helped to create the very problem they now seek to repair,” Dorries pens.

On her attempts to reduce the UK’s abortion limit, the former MP wrote that she failed to do so, despite securing debates in Westminster in both 2008 and 2012, “even though babies have been born at 23 weeks or even less, and gone on to survive and thrive.”

“The rights of the unborn have to be balanced against those of the living,” Dorries writes.. 

“In sending the message to women that abortion is fine until birth, Creasy and Johnson’s amendments risk placing vulnerable women in life-threatening situations: encouraging them to end late-term pregnancies at home in the absence of proper care.

“And even if a late-term foetus is ‘safely’ aborted, the psychological scarring can be acute — as I know from my experience all those years ago.”

Conservative MP Miriam Cates has also spoken up against efforts to decriminalise abortion in Britain, warning last month that it would fuel late-term DIY procedures.

“Decriminalising abortion to term would not just put women in danger, it would mark a serious failure in our duty to protect the rights of the unborn child,” the senior MP wrote for The Telegraph newspaper.

A government review published last year found that babies were being born alive in Ireland after abortions.

The review of the operation of the 2018 abortion law found that babies may be denied even comfort care after the procedure failed to end their lives.

Discussing palliative care – where comfort care is needed for babies born alive after a late-term abortion – the 2023 noted that some paediatricians and neonatologists do not want to be involved in assisting these babies.

“However, the extent to which they are prepared to become involved is described as differing across settings and differing across the circumstances of the birth, with some not being prepared to offer comfort care where the birth is a result of a termination of pregnancy,” the review, authored by barrister Marie O’Shea, noted.

In 2020, this platform revealed that doctors in Ireland were dealing with babies born alive after late term abortions, as per a UCC study which gathered the views and experiences of doctors in Ireland.

As we revealed: In the UCC study, the authors note that the specialists carrying out abortion were frustrated by conflict with neonatologists and were “unclear” as to who will look after those babies’ if a baby was “born alive following an abortion by induction of labour and without feticide”.

This would leave the doctor who performed an unsuccessful late-term abortion “begging people to help” them provide palliative care if the baby survived, the study recorded.

---

Maria Maynes

   

---

   

This article was printed in Gript and is published here with permission
  

---