Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:14 pm on 16 January 2018.
Leader of the house, I was very pleased to host the exhibition in the Pierhead this afternoon to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of the Abortion Act 1967, but I think Assembly Members present were all somewhat shocked to hear just how little progress has been made in this last half-century in dealing with the inequalities of abortion access in Wales. Because we seem to be in a much worse position than in other parts of Britain, and, as a result, women are having their access to abortion artificially delayed by being forced to see their GP before they can access the gynae services that they require, and many of those who are being referred to the voluntary sector are having to pay £600 themselves because of these delays, and also having to have surgical abortions because it's too late for them to have a medical abortion, which obviously is much less invasive. So, I wondered if we could have the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on how he would be able to address this. I think there is an outlier, Gwent, which is very good at referring people who they can't accommodate themselves to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, but other health boards do not have a good record. I think, across the Chamber, there should be alarm about this and we need to know how we're going to deal with this in the future.