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Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked Her Majesty's Government:
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: The Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy was established to provide advice to government and monitor the success of the national Teenage Pregnancy Strategy. The group includes a membership draw from a wide range of individuals and organisations with experience of working with young people and teenage parents. The first annual report of the group set out 49 recommendations to government on the further delivery of the national strategy. The government response addresses these recommendations to set out a forward action plan for the next phase of delivery.
In addition to the independent advisory group, the Teenage Pregnancy Unit has put in place arrangements to consult and involve the non-statutory sector, faith groups, relevant professional organisations, regional and local teenage pregnancy co-ordinators, young people and parents in tackling teenage pregnancy. The views of these organisations and individuals were taken into account in developing the government response.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked Her Majesty's Government:
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: The Government's position on conscientious objection to abortion remains unchanged. Section 4 of the Abortion Act 1967, as amended, provides that, except where treatment is necessary to save the life of or prevent grave permanent injury to the pregnant woman, "no person shall be under any duty, whether by contract or by any statutory or other legal requirement, to participate in any treatment authorised by this Act to which he has a conscientious objection".
This exemption does not extend to giving advice, performing the preparatory steps to arrange an abortion where the request meets legal requirements and undertaking administration connected with abortion procedures. Doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion should make their views known to the patient and enable the patient to see another doctor without delay if that is the patient's wish.
The General Medical Council booklet Good Medical Practice states that general practitioners' views about a patient's lifestyle or beliefs must not prejudice the treatment they provide or arrange. If they feel their beliefs might affect the treatment, this must be explained to the patient, who should be told of their right to see another doctor. Breach of this guidance may expose a doctor to a charge of serious professional misconduct and disciplinary action by the GMC.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked Her Majesty's Government.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: An analysis of the general practice audits which have been returned to the Teenage Pregnancy Unit will provide an indication of the proportion of general practitioners, nationally and regionally, who have a conscientious objection to abortion or who have a practice policy not to provide contraception to under 16s.
Information on the analysis will be available on the Teenage Pregnancy Unit website by the end of the year.
Baroness Noakes asked Her Majesty's Government:
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: Overseas clinical teams are already operating on National Health Service patients in England as part of a first mover wave of projects. For these projects providers were identified who could in principle bring in clinicians to a tight timetable, at an appropriate price. Central funding is only being released where providers can demonstrate high clinical quality and good value for money benchmarked against alternative sources of capacity in the local independent sector.
Lord Campbell-Savours asked Her Majesty's Government:
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: The early reports of a cancer incidence in Valladolid in Spain were first noted in December 2000 and have subsequently been reported in the press. After this case received much national and international attention the World Health Organisation released a statement saying that none of the recent reviews has concluded that exposure to the radiofrequency (RF) fields from mobile phones or their base stations causes any adverse health consequence.
The Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones (the Stewart Group) was set up to investigate the public health implications of mobile phone technologies. Its report, based on a review of all available research to date, was published in May 2000. It concluded that the balance of evidence does not suggest that the mobile phone technologies put the health of the general population at risk. It did, however, include a recommendation to set up a substantial research programme. This programme, jointly funded by government and industry, is currently under way.
The Stewart Group also recommended that there should be an audit of base stations to ensure that exposure guidelines were not exceeded and that base stations on or near to sensitive sites should be a priority. The Radiocommunications Agency, an executive agency of the Department of Trade and Industry, undertook 100 audits in 2001 on schools with masts on their premises, and this exercise showed a level of emissions far below the international guidelines. All the results are on the agency website (www.radio.gov.uk).
Baroness Masham of Ilton asked Her Majesty's Government:
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: The guidelines issued by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists on the management of pregnancy loss indicate that many publications confirm the negative psychological impact of miscarriage on a significant proportion of women.
In addition, publications from the Miscarriage Association and the Still Birth and Neonatal Deaths Society show that women may experience a variety of emotions, which can range from disappointment,
anger, guilt, to wonder about what they did wrong, why their pregnancy ended or why their baby died. Having a miscarraige at home can sometimes be a distressing, frightening and lonely experience for some women. Women certainly feel a sense of loss and need time to grieve over the lost baby.While the needs of women who experience loss through miscarriage will vary in the amount and kind of support they need and in the kind of care they find acceptable, this is provided mainly through the general practitioner, midwife and health visitor who are best placed to manage their after-care. Women are also given information about the help available in the voluntary sector. The department provides support through Section 64 funding to:
Baroness Masham of Ilton asked Her Majesty's Government:
What advice is given to women about the disposal of the corpse of an unborn child following an abortion using abortion drug RU 486.[HL5228]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: Women seeking an abortion should be given clear information beforehand to help them prepare for the procedure and staff are on hand to give support. A study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 1 found that two years after early medical and surgical abortion procedures there were no significant differences between women who had undergone medical abortion or surgical abortion in either general, reproductive or psychological health. Almost all women placed a high value on the provision of choice of method of termination. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' evidence-based guideline The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion considered the mental health implications of termination and concluded "only a small minority of women experience any long term, adverse psychological sequelae after abortion" and stated that referral for further counselling should be available for these women.
Guidance issued by the Department of Health in 1991 states that, for babies born dead before 24 weeks, the fetal tissue should be incinerated if the parents have not expressed any specific wishes about disposal. Terminations carried out after 24 weeks gestation (the legal age of viability) are registered as stillbirths and the law requires the body to be buried or cremated.
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