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Nadine Dorries MP: Why 20 and not 22 weeks?

Nadine Dorries is MP for Mid Bedfordshire and is author of a popular blog.  She writes today about her cross-party campaign to reduce the upper limit for abortion from 24 weeks to 20 weeks.

I have 20 reasons why I think the abortion limit should be reduced to 20 weeks.  Viability - the age at which a foetus can survive outside of the womb - is only one of them.

The Trent study that has been in the headlines recently and appears to advocate 22 weeks is flawed. To begin with, some of Trent's data is twelve years old. There is only one lesson to be learnt from the Trent study and that is if you are about to go into premature labour, don’t do it in Trent!

The reason 22 weekers are not always surviving in the UK has everything to do with the fact that each neo natal unit had to close its doors an average 52 times over the last year (National Audit Office, Caring for Vulnerable Babies, The Reorganisation Of Neo Natal Services In England, 19th December 2007, pg 24 Para. 3.3). The units are understaffed, and as Bliss say, if we had dedicated neo natal transfer ambulances and well-staffed units - as they do in Sweden and other countries - we would begin to see a much healthier picture.

It's about the service the NHS provides to 22 weekers which prevents them from living, not their ability with the right treatment to make it through.

Nadine Dorries MP: Take a sad song and make it better

Nadine Dorries MP - first elected last year to represent Mid Bedfordshire - reflects on last week's decision to  establish a single Liverpool-wide Conservative Association.

On the hottest night since records began, in an airless upstairs room of a Liverpool Conservative club, Chris Grayling, Shadow Minister for Transport, and I faced the assembled members of five Liverpool Conservative associations. It was the end of the road, and everyone in the room, almost, knew it.

The end was relatively painless really. You simply couldn’t argue with the facts. Liverpool doesn’t have a single Conservative councillor or MP. Yet in the room with us, observing through silent eyes, hung a portrait of the assembled Liverpool City Council of 1955, every single one a Conservative.

There were eight Conservative Liverpool MPs at that time. One thing I don’t think Mrs Thatcher ever really understood was that to have one you need the other. Local and national politics are inextricably bound together in a subtle and complex way which demands respect. We forgot that in the late 80s and early 90s.

Note to Shadow Cabinet – never forget the mistakes of the past.

Some of the activists sat before us had ‘worked their patch’ for fifty or more years. Dedicated and loyal, we were asking them to vote to dissolve their own associations so that we, from the centre, could establish a new, single, city of Liverpool association.

If they chose not to agree they would be placed into supported status. There’s no easy way to say that to a group of hard working proud Liverpudlians; I know, I’m a native.

Chris addressed the audience and did the difficult stuff. He knew exactly what his objectives were and how to achieve them. What was needed was a speech worthy of Ghandi with a touch of Robespierre. He handled the situation with tact and skill. An iron hand in a velvet glove.

Whilst what Chris had said sank in, I took over and explained why I, one of their own, someone who had grown up 500 yds from where we were sitting, was the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, over 150 miles away.

They looked hurt, except for the three CF members, sat in the middle, periodically checking their mobile phones, of course to them it made perfect sense.

I simply couldn’t have stood for a Liverpool seat. I wanted to be an MP so badly it consumed me. I had waited until two successful careers, one in nursing and another in business were under my belt and raised my three daughters before I began to apply for seats. Not to become an MP was simply not an option – I had waited too long.