UK: The ‘phone call abortion’ row is distracting us from the real injustices faced by women seeking a termination

The 'phone call abortion' row is distracting us from the real injustices faced by women seeking a termination

Women are not incubators. We should not become dehumanised vessels as soon as a pregnancy occurs, our own decisions and desires erased in favour of some perceived greater good of carrying a foetus to term

by Harriet Williamson
Mar 6, 2017

On Sunday evening, the Daily Mail published an investigation into Britain’s largest independent provider of abortions, Marie Stopes, revealing that terminations are being approved after short telephone conversations, some as brief as 22 seconds. Marie Stopes’ managing director Paul McPartian maintains that all the provider’s services comply with British abortion law and that the 22 second conversation between a call centre worker and a Mail journalist pretending to require a termination was part of “a 16-minute booking call, which was very thorough”.

But now a row has now broken out with some commentators online and on social media – many of them, it must be pointed out, men – taking particular umbrage at the idea that some women do not meet face-to-face with the two doctors legally required to sign off on their termination through Marie Stopes clinics or at any abortion provider in Britain. This despite the fact that it is not a legal requirement for either doctor to meet the patient face to face; the Department of Health describes an in-person meeting as ‘desirable’, not essential.

Continued at link: The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/marie-stopes-abortion-phone-call-row-pregnancy-termination-women-injustice-a7614216.html