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Department of Health

My central point is this: if we want to have a cool and rational debate on the subject and we want it to be prompted by the science, come to us with the science. If not, the debate descends into raw emotion and prejudice. I stated my position at the beginning. We have heard from other hon. Members what their position is. In the end, the decision often comes down to emotion, how people feel and their own sense of what is right or wrong. That is why I believe it is for individual women to make the decision, because it is a profoundly personal decision. The Marie Stopes International study on late abortion provides many of the figures and stories that I have quoted. I will be happy to provide the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough with a copy. There have been studies about why women have late abortions and the circumstances that provoke those late abortions. Every time I have been pregnant, I have had the great good fortune that my children were wanted and we eagerly anticipated them. It is difficult to imagine how it must be for women who profoundly do not want to be pregnant, who do not know what to do, who do not speak English, who may be 14, or who may be 48 and already have four grown-up children. Abortion is already so stigmatised that we must be very careful when we tread down this path. In the end, although we have many disagreements, I presume we all agree that every abortion is a tragedy, and that every child should be born into a home that wants it and loves it. At least we can all agree with the hon. Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) when he said that if we want to try to make life easier for families, the most important thing for us to do is to improve sex education in schools and relationship education so that people treat one another with respect, so that young girls know that they do not need to sleep with their boyfriends in order to be important and in order for their boyfriends to love them, and so that people have respect for themselves and one another. That should be comprehensively taught in our schools, and we should also ensure that people have access to abortion and to information, so that we can all aspire together to ensure that when a child is born, it is wanted and loved.