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Abortion Law (Northern Ireland)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Lady Winterton. I did not intend to speak, but I cannot let my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) get away with some of the crazy stuff that I heard earlier. He depicted me and my constituents as primitive savages who attack pregnant women in the streets. I live beside a Family Planning Association clinic, my constituency office is beside it, and for 30 years I have worked as a general practitioner beside it. Never, in that whole time, have I seen baying mobs attacking people at the clinic. Occasionally there are crazies—there are crazy people on the pro-life side of the argument—and some of these things can happen, but for God's sake please do not paint us as primitive savages.