Dr. Sam Coulter-Smith:

I am an obstetrician - a simple obstetrician. I am not a legislator and I am not a lawyer so I am not an expert in how things should be drafted. What I can safely say is that the vast majority of obstetricians would like to see a situation where we are able to look after and support women in the choices they have made regardless of what those choices are. If a woman decides that she wants to carry on with her pregnancy and maintain it, we need to be able to support that choice where, because she has unique needs, we can look after her in facilities that are possibly slightly separate from ordinary antenatal clinics which cater for the run of the mill normal obstetric patient. Resources need to be made available for that type of situation. Hospice-type care for those babies would be very welcome but we need facilities to do that. Our current infrastructure does not and could not support that type of facility. That is a very humane way of dealing with things. In the same way, for women who choose not to proceed with the pregnancy, ideally, we would like to be in a situation to support them in that choice.

We have spoken about low-risk and high-risk women becoming pregnant. There are situations where it is unsafe for a woman to travel abroad for a termination of pregnancy and, in that situation, we would favour legislation that would support us to be able to look after a woman who has made that choice. It is about our support for women in the choices they make. It is down to lawyers and legislators to try to put things in place to allow us to do that.