ABORTION LATION CAMPAIGN- FREE ce DHSS to by Mary Wilkins withdraw forms

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If a delegate, name & address of branch Speakers at the conference will include: Hilary Bird (Lambeth NALGO), Jan Pollock and Vida Bond (Women in NUT), Theresa Gunn (Edinburgh I can offer/I will need somewhere to stay Unemployed Centre), Helen Allison (War on Want), Hilary Land, Harriet Harman, Andrea Campbell, Ursula Huws, Cathy Warnock (Hackney I enclose £3.50 conference fee (£2 if low Murphy, Christine Bickerstaff, Helen Flack, NALGO), Angela Phillips, Lucy Gaskell, Winnie waged or unwaged non-delegate) Siobhan Lanigan (Foyles strike), Jean Sprey Brent CHC) and a speaker from Plesseys occupa- Send to: TU Conference, 41 Ellington tion, plus many others to be confirmed.

'There will be an all-day creche. Workshops on various topics under main groups: Pay; publie sector and the cuts; jobs; fighting sexism; racism The conference fee is £3.50 (£2 for low-waged or unwaged non-delegates). Credentials from 41 THE recent attack on women's abortion rights resulting from the DHSS's bureaucratic changes in the in the forms filled out by doctors performing abor tions, was one of the topics discussed at last Saturday's Conference on "Abortion and the Health Service" organised by the National Abortion Campaign and ALRA.

Although Huntingford and other pro-choice sutgeons are not being prosecuted for non-compliance with the form at the moment, the forms are still in use.

Speakers at the conference urged .. the importance of putting pressure on the new health minister to withdraw these forms altogether.

However, the form change demonstrates how vulnerable existing abortion rights are. We need legislation to de-criminalise abortion and discussion about what kind of positive moves for example a facilities bill, we should be pressing for.

The Labour Party will be drawing up its election manifesto soon so we need to pressurise the NEC to include firm commitments on abortion rights in this document.

But the legal right to abortion was not the only and the Third World.

Ellington Street, London N7. issue discussed. Dr Sheila Abdullah spoke of the struggle by the Merseyside Abortion Campaign for a day-care abortion centre in Liverpool.

Their experience showed that even in a reputedly anti-abortion city, with a large Roman Catholic population, abortion facilities can be expanded and improved if pressure is put on sympathetic CHC reps and doctors through an effectively organised campaign.

The experience of the Liverpool day-care centre and of elsewhere demonstrated that there are problems too.

In Liverpool there have been difficulties in finding adequate numbers of wellqualified, sympathetic staff necessary to enable the centre to respond to women's needs.

Elsewhere there is a tendency to make day-care a cheap option, allowing health authorities to cut down on in-patient gynacology beds and denying the women the choice as to whether they can stay in overnight.

What made these discussions particularly useful and informative was the fact that a significant proportion of the people present were health service workers who spoke from their own experience of how existing facilities operate and how government cuts are affecting services. It became clear that the NHS is increasingly contracting work out to private hospitals. This increases costs for the NHS, encourages the private sector, and lets the NHS off the hook over providing arlennate nrovision itself.

Clearly abortion is particularly "suitable" for contract work. Also it is common practice for consultants to use NHS beds for private abortion pa ients which benefits the cc nsultants but not the NF S or ordinary women who can't afford private care.

It therefore became clear from the conference that women's tree access to abortion requires two things -the removal of legal restrictions and adequate NHS provision.

It is crucial that the labour movement fights on both fronts. The Trades Union Liaison Committee of NAC is seeking to coordinate this work but activists all over the country - and in Scotland and Wales - should pressurise their union to adopt pro-choice policies, to fight attacks on the NHS and to actively press for the expansion of existing abortion provision.

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