Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

An
NHS hospital trust has agreed to pay £27,500 compensation in an
out-of-court settlement with a mother of three for aborting her unborn
baby against her will and ignoring her attempts to withdraw her consent.

Teresa
Cooper, 40, was worried that an E coli infection and antibiotic
treatment she had a few weeks into her pregnancy after developing
bleeding and nausea might have harmed the baby.

Unable to get
answers, she reluctantly signed the consent form for an abortion at
Princess Alexandra hospital in Harlow, Essex, in November 2003. But in
the two days between signing the form and the day the termination was
scheduled, she watched an anti-abortion video which reinforced her
doubts.

She
went to the hospital on the day, saying that she was only having the
abortion for medical reasons and questioning whether the procedure
would be traumatic for the foetus. She still got no answers but was
taken to theatre upset and tearful, according to her medical notes.

In
papers filed with the court, the Princess Alexandra hospital trust
admitted that staff failed to counsel Ms Cooper about her pregnancy,
failed to refer her to someone who could counsel her appropriately, and
went ahead with the abortion without getting confirmation that she
consented. The trust, which agreed to the settlement last week,
conceded that she had not been seen by the surgeon before the operation
despite her obvious concern.

Ms Cooper, from Ongar, Essex, said
the experience had reopened the wounds of her childhood, related in her
memoir Pin Down, published last month by Orion Books. Born to an
alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, she was put into care at
six months.

At 13 she was sent to Kendall House in Kent, where
she was subjected to the "pin down" solitary confinement regime, given
large doses of tranquillisers and sexually abused. She now sees herself
as a survivor, with three "wonderful children" of 20, 18 and 14. "When
you’ve gone through the care system and the only thing you’ve ever been
good at is having your children and someone takes that away from you,
that is really bad for someone like me. It opened all the wounds of my
childhood," she said.

Her solicitor, David Kerry, from Essex law
firm Attwater & Liell, said: "Teresa wanted answers to her concerns
about her own health and that of her baby. It was as if she was on a
conveyor belt which was impossible to stop. Despite her obvious
distress she was not respected as an individual with the tragic result
that she lost her baby totally unnecessarily."

A trust spokesman
said: "Extra training has been provided and the patient pathway for the
treatment improved to ensure the same thing could not happen again. We
would like to apologise to Ms Cooper for shortcomings in the care."