The word ‘midwife’ means ‘with woman’ and since embarking on my midwifery training 17 years ago, that is exactly where I have been. I have supported women during the elation of becoming a mother, and I have held women and cried with them at the raw despair and anguish of loss. It is absolutely true what they say: midwifery is not just a job, it's a calling. This calling has lead me to my current role: I am a midwife and I work in abortion care.
I see no conflict between being a midwife and working in abortion care. At the heart of midwifery is the firm belief that we must trust women and respect the decisions that they make. I trust a women to make the right choices for them, which means respecting a woman's decision to end a pregnancy just as much as we would respect another woman's decisions about where to give birth. Once the decision to seek a termination has been made, it is my job to ensure the woman's emotional and physical wellbeing.
I remember a particular woman who was in a violent relationship. As well as helping this woman to access agencies that could provide long-term support, enabling her to end her pregnancy meant that she no longer had to have any further contact with her partner and she was able to leave him. She thanked us for giving her freedom to start again. What midwives at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) did for that woman changed her life.
Women need someone to fight alongside them and sometimes for them. They need a midwife. As a midwife working in abortion care, I want to speak out about the joy and pride I find in my job, to attract passionate, like-minded professionals to provide the abortion care that one in three women will need in their lifetime. Midwives need to break the taboo and secrecy of abortion. I also want to act as an advocate and put pressure on the Government to abolish the antiquated laws around abortion and make access easier and quicker.
‘I see no conflict between being a midwife and working in abortion care. At the heart of midwifery is the firm belief that we must trust women and respect the decisions that they make’
If an abortion occurs outside the stringent parameters of the Abortion Act [1967]—regardless of the stage of gestation—the woman and healthcare providers can be prosecuted and face a life prison sentence under the Offences Against the Person Act [1861]. This law is 158 years old, and was passed the year that the American Civil War began! The Abortion Act [1967] does not extend to Northern Ireland, which is governed by sections of the Offences Against the Person Act [1861] and the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) [1945].
No other medical procedure in the UK is governed by legislation in this way. The law means that a woman cannot make a decision about her own body, but instead must seek the approval of two separate doctors before an abortion is deemed legal. The law also prevents the development of midwifery-led services that we know are the gold standard in all other aspects of maternity care.
This is why we at BPAS, alongside organisations including the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), have launched the We Trust Women campaign to scrap this outdated law. We believe that abortion should be decriminalised; it should continue to be governed by the same robust regulatory frameworks that govern all other medical procedures in the UK. In the 21st century we should be trusting women to make their own decisions about their reproductive lives, and removing the threat of prosecution from women, and the health professionals providing them with the services and support they need.
Watching the final episode of the eighth series of Call the Midwife (2019), it struck me that midwives have never sat back and accepted inequalities in healthcare provision. It is within our gift and our duty as advocates for women to push for change, to say that we trust women to make their own decisions, and we that will support them with the safest, highest quality care available. We will always be there to hold their hand, but with the other hand we must break the glass ceiling.
I am incredibly proud of who I am and what I do: I am a midwife and I am ‘with woman’.