Seebaran-Suite defines laws relating to abortion

Chairperson of Advocates for Safe Parenthood: Improving Reproductive Equity (ASPIRE), attorney, Lynette Seebaran-Suite on Saturday said doctors, other health care professionals and their respective  associations had a duty to lobby for clearly defined laws relating to abortion. She said guidelines and protocols should be demanded to give doctors the guidance and clearance they need. She said the law in TT is “very ambiguous” and quoted sections 56 and 57 in Chapter 11:08 in the Offences Against the Person.

Section 56 states that it is unlawful for a pregnant woman to “unlawfully” procure a miscarriage or administer any poison or “noxious thing” or use any instrument to end the pregnancy, while section 57 states that it is an offence for any person who “unlawfully” supplies or procures any poisonous or noxious thing or any instrument or thing whatsoever “knowing the same is intended to be unlawfully used or employed with intent to procure a miscarriage of any woman.” Seebaran-Suite said: “I don’t think that it would be correct to say that abortion is unlawful in TT in all circumstances. A better statement of the law is that abortion is unlawful if it is performed in unsafe circumstances by someone who is not qualified. ”

She said doctors can terminate a pregnancy under what is known in the medical field as the “doctrine of necessity.” This allows the doctor to perform a procedure if his clinical judgment deems it necessary to preserve health of the woman. “You have the common law and the Offences Against the Person Act which prohibits unlawful abortions, but doctors performing a procedure that is bona fide in their clinical judgment in terms of preserving the health of the woman are in the clear.” Seebaran-Suite was speaking at the 2004 annual conference jointly hosted by the Gynaecological and Obstetrical Society of TT and the General Practitioners Association of TT at Crowne Plaza. The Conference focused on “Abortion — Should the legal status change in TT.”

She was listed to be debating the topic with a member of Lawyers for Jesus, but the representative was absent as was Health Minister John Rahael, who was also scheduled to deliver a message. Highlighting another legal ambiguity, Seebaran-Suite said precedents in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries are of highly persuasive authority in the courts of TT. She cited the case King vs Bourne (1938) involving a 14-year-old who was raped by a soldier. A doctor sought to test the doctrine of necessity by performing an abortion. A psychiatrist had determined that she would be a “mental wreck” if she carried the baby to term. The abortion was done at a public hospital with the media and members of the public as witnesses. Although the doctor was charged, the judge directed the jury “that once the doctor in the exercise of his clinical judgment was performing the procedure to protect the life and the health of the woman, he had to be acquitted of the charge.”

Seebaran-Suite said the judge defined health as physical and mental health. She said the case (King vs Bourne) would be a precedent which is binding and of persuasive authority in Commonwealth countries. Seebaran-Suite said it has never been challenged and many Commonwealth countries have developed their own legislation to deal with ambiguities. She said the reason the local law is unclear, and unsatisfactory is that the doctor may run the risk of prosecution “if he performs a procedure, and would then be put to the trouble of defending himself and defending his clinical judgment.” Seebaran-Suite said countries which recently codified their common laws related to termination of pregnancy have taken into consideration the mental health of the woman. She said ASPIRE has proposed a law which would clarify the circumstances under which abortion would be permitted.