The proposed alterations to the legality of abortion.
The Expert Group has taken over a year to discuss the issues covered in this report and to identify potential proposals for reform to ensure that abortion services are first and foremost a healthcare matter. Throughout our deliberations we have aimed to balance the need to ensure patient safety whilst seeking to enhance the rights of everyone who requires access to these essential services. The discussions have been complex, and in some parts of the report we have detailed our thinking presenting a number of options for a particular recommendation together with the justification for our final decision. We have paid very careful attention to the published evidence which has led us to making our recommendations. Throughout the course of the meetings some members have changed their minds over certain subjects, a testament to the seriousness and thought with which the task was undertaken.
We have benefited greatly from the input and expertise of a wide range of stakeholders in reaching the recommendations presented throughout this report and we should like to thank everyone who has contributed. Some people reading the report will be disappointed with our recommendations. There will be some who feel that we have not gone far enough in reducing the regulation and the restrictions which surround abortion care, others will feel we have gone far too far. We trust that everyone reading the report will do so carefully and respectfully and put women with an unwanted pregnancy at the heart of their thinking.
Faced with the unwelcome news of an unwanted pregnancy women express a mixture of shock, dismay, embarrassment, even fear and many feel very alone, unable to speak to friends, relatives or even their partner. No woman takes the decision to have an abortion lightly. When they have made this decision, they deserve to be treated with compassion, given accurate information about abortion, and they also deserve to be treated quickly and efficiently. The Expert Group hopes that the Scottish Parliament, after reading this report, will seize the opportunity to change the law to ensure that this happens for the thousands of women in Scotland who seek abortion every year.