Midwives boss in row: ‘Abortions are your job and shouldn’t be questioned’
Professor Cathy Warwick wants to scrap abortion law but faces calls to quit
MIDWIVES should see abortion as part of their job and not a question of “rights and wrongs” according to the chairman of the country’s biggest abortion provider.
Cathy Warwick, who faces calls to quit as chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, said last night midwives should “deal with the rough and the smooth” not just delivering babies.
Prof Warwick caused fury by signing the union up to a campaign to decriminalise abortion without consulting members.
The push to scrap the 24-week legal cut-off for terminations is being led by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Britain’s biggest abortion provider of whom she is also chairman.
Under the 1967 Abortion Act, women can abort an unborn baby up until 24 weeks’ gestation, with exceptions after that allowed on medical grounds.
But the BPAS’s We Trust Women campaign, which launched in February, says that “the abortion time limit be removed from criminal law”.
Prof Warwick told the Daily Telegraph she wants the Abortion Act scrapped, arguing it is interpreted “almost as loosely as is possible” to enable women to get around restrictions.
She dismissed the argument that there is a contradiction between a profession dedicated to delivering babies and campaigning for easier abortions.
She said: “The role of the midwife is about supporting the woman. It’s not our job to say anything about the rights and wrongs of abortion.”
Critics fear such a radical change would lead to healthy foetuses being aborted late in pregnancy for the convenience of the mother or because they were the ‘wrong’ sex.
BPAS, which receives £25 million of public money to carry out 63,000 terminations a year on behalf of the NHS, is led by Ann Furedi, its £145,000-a-year chief executive.
Professor Warwick became BPAS chairman in 2014, and has been a trustee for five years.
Her BPAS position is unpaid, but she receives £155,000 a year for her RCM job.
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