ABSTRACT
Lord Denning MR: Abortion is a controversial subject. The question for us today is this: when a pregnancy is terminated by medical induction, who should do the actual act of termination? Should it be done by a doctor? Or can he leave it to the nurses? The Royal College of Nursing say that the doctor should do the actual act himself and not leave it to the nurses. The Department of Health and Social Security take a different view. They say that a doctor can initiate the process and then go off and do other things, so long as he is 'on call'. The controversy is so acute that it has come before us for decision. Throughout the discussion I am going to speak of the unborn child. The old common lawyers spoke of a child en ventre sa mere. Doctors speak of it as the foetus. In simple English it is an unborn child inside the mother's womb. Such a child was protected by the criminal law almost to the same extent as a new-born baby. If anyone terminated the pregnancy-and thus destroyed the unborn child-he or she was guilty of a felony and was liable to be kept in penal servitude for life (see s 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861) unless it was done to save the life of the mother: see R v Bourne [1939] 1 KB 687. Likewise anyone who assisted or participated in the abortion was guilty, including the mother herself. I have tried several cases of 'back-street abortions'-where the mother died or was made seriously ill. I have passed severe sentences of imprisonment for the offence.
