§ Miss Richardsonasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will call for a report on the incident at Wanstead hospital where an aborted foetus was alleged to have moved and cried before it died.
§ Dr. VaughanThe Redbridge and Waltham Forest area health authority reported to the Department in April concerning the incident said to have occurred 199W at Wanstead hospital. In the absence of specific details, the authority was unable to identify with certainty the case concerned, but assumed on the basis of the information available that the newspaper reports referred to a patient treated in the autumn of 1978.
The period of pregnancy at the time of abortion in the case was nineteen weeks, with a margin of error of not more than one week. The authority stated that it was not known whether the foetus emitted a cry, but that the consultant's view was that its lungs were not capable of expansion at that stage.
I am not aware of any instances, apart from the alleged cases which have been reported in the press and have become the subject of investigations, of foetuses being delivered which were capable of independent life and which died because of lack of proper care.