My Lords, I was not going to speak on this, but I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and that encouraged me to stand up and speak, together with other noble Lords who are a bit cautious about all of this. I was a vicar of an inner-city parish in which there were a lot of teenage pregnancies, and those who made them pregnant tried to force them to have abortions. The only person they felt they could tell was the vicar, not their parents, because their parents would hit the roof. Some of them would get corporal punishment as a result. I found myself in difficult, tricky situations, but I was fortunate, because in the congregation we had midwives and doctors. I simply said, “I listened to what you are saying to me, but I am not medically qualified to give any advice. We have experienced people who can give you that advice.” I was grateful that those midwives and doctors were able to accompany these teenage girls and help them come to a more sensible position.
I speak as somebody who is not against abortion, because the welfare of the mother and her rights need to be protected, but I am concerned about a measure that was brought in because of extreme circumstances. The Government were right, during the pandemic, to allow the kind of arrangement that was set up. But I am with the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, that we should not change overnight a tradition and circumstances that were accepted by the majority who see the right of abortion. We should not say that we will now go down this almost administrative route as the norm. Most people would be very concerned if we were going down a particular route.
I strongly believe, because of my experience of those teenage pregnancies in Tulse Hill, that the role of doctors, specialists in counselling and others is
absolutely vital. You cannot do away with that because it is easier at the end of a telephone. You may not believe it, but young boys who had made girls pregnant would put pressure on them to have these abortions, for no reason other than that they wanted to move on to the next young girl. I still find that unacceptable.
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I am reminded of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, when most of the clergy of the Church of England were white. Congregations wanted to have communion, but they knew that if a white person turned up at a church during Mau Mau, they would be killed. So they took the decision that the lay people within the congregation should celebrate communion. That happened. Then Mau Mau ended, and the Church in Kenya said, “Oh good, we can now have lay celebration of communion, because these white people won’t be killed any more because Mau Mau has ended.” Archbishop Randall Davidson, who was Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, said, “During Mau Mau, it was a good thing that communion was celebrated by lay people, but it must not continue, because the old order was to establish who should be celebrating.”
We have been through this very difficult period. I am not so sure that measures that were appropriate during that time are appropriate now and should simply be rolled over. We need a fuller debate and it cannot come at the end of this stage. It was not there at the beginning, when there would have been a lot of debate. I would find it difficult if the Minister accepted the amendment, because the Government announced that this measure would come to an end, like all the other measures brought in because of extreme circumstances.