In late October 2011, Vera took part in a discussion of the case on BBC Radio 4 with Jane\’s parents.

Listen to the piece on Womans Hour

What possible point could there be to Nadine Dorries legislative amendment excluding abortion clinics from ever giving advice to pregnant women if it isn’t to limit abortions?

In what many commentators have called a dishonest article in the Mail last week, Ms Dorries MP asserted that the point of her proposed change to the Health and Social Care Bill is that she supports a woman’s right to choose. Her opening paragraphs disclose the real reason by graphically describing a late abortion she alleges she witnessed.

How is this personal horror story relevant to an amendment on who should give advice to women with an unwanted pregnancy?  It isn’t.  It is anti-abortion propaganda.

So called “pro life” campaigners know that they cannot turn the clock back far enough to reverse the 43 year old Abortion Act. Instead, they seize on every Health Bill as an opportunity to put an obstacle in its way.

Hence Dorries supported cutting the time limit from 24 to 20 weeks despite blanket medical opinion that no scientific advance required such a cut.

Similarly, all the evidence is that the current pregnancy advice system works well. Dorries allegation, in the Mail, that “thousands of women”are conveyor belted into abortions quotes no source and no basis in fact. Frank Field who supports her amendment for his own reasons, has made clear that he has no criticisms of advisers.

David Steel, the architect of the Abortion Act, told The Observer today

\”The Department of Health has complete power over licensing and de-licensing clinics. If there were any evidence of failure to carry out proper counselling of patients, they can close clinics. More positively there is nothing to stop them issuing guidelines on counselling if they think that necessary\”

Women who find they are pregnant go to their GP or to a sexual health clinic and simply register for ante-natal treatment unless they don’t want a pregnancy or have doubts. In either of those cases, their first discussion of other options will be with their own clinician.

Both women who are pleased to be pregnant and those who are not deserve expert advice.  Ms Dorries says that she wants this advice to be “independent” of those who offer abortion. That is a very odd idea. By definition, a woman who is looking for something other than ante-natal help is considering abortion.  Secondly, it is a strange stance for someone who supports “the right to choose”, unless that right to choose is the right to be advised to choose anything but an abortion.

The experts in this field are the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and Marie Stopes, both of whose focus is rightly on preventing unwanted pregnancies. They both certainly provide abortions but both their websites make the case for other ways forward as well.

They offer a template to help women to think the issue through and to evaluate their emotions. Twenty per cent of women who go to them for face to face advice intent on an abortion, change their minds and continue their pregnancy to full term.

It is worth remembering that an abortion is only lawful in the UK if two medical practitioners certify that terminating a pregnancy will be less damaging to a woman’s physical or mental health than completing it.

Even David Cameron has now seen that there is no case for preventing these tried and tested organisations from advising. He will vote against the amendment and it is believed has written to his backbenchers encouraging them to do the same. Yet another somersault, though Ms Dorries said in the Mail that she expects him to change his mind again.

On Friday, Louise Mensch MP made a bid for a share of the limelight as an honest broker. She tabled a different  amendment which serves only to add a further layer of unnecessary muddle.  She wants an option for advice to be available that is “independent” both of abortion providers and of faith groups.

Firstly, that is an insult to some excellent faith groups, many of whom give welcome support to women who choose abortion.

Secondly, BPAS and Stopes are both prepared to counsel every option. They are not correctly seen as zealots on the other side of an ideological coin from groups like LIFE who reject abortion in all circumstances.

Thirdly, any woman already has the “option” of advice from all of these and an array of further pregnancy advice groups.  The problem with Dorries proposal is that it compels the exclusion of abortion providers and compels the taking of advice from others.

There is every need to prevent that and no need to put options already on offer into law.

This issue does not merit debate. It distracts from the need to fight, tooth and nail, the Health and Social Care Bill which will open our National Health Service to competition and ensure that the title \”National\” no longer applies.

Also available on the Guardian website.

National revulsion and popular demand for punishment are dangerous things. They licensed the rule-bending that miscarried justice in the 80s, for the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four. In the miners’ strike, once Margaret Thatcher had called the NUM “the enemy within”,it was next to impossible to get them honestly policed or fairly tried.

How far from that danger re-emerging are we now when David Cameron asserts that everyone involved with rioting, however peripherally, should expect to go to jail; 100,000 sign a petition for those convicted to lose their benefits and councils intend to evict people who live in the same house as culprits, just for being their brother, sister or grandparent?

The Guardian reported this week that magistrates\’ clerks had \”instructions\” from a \”senior clerk\” to advise the bench to disregard all sentencing guidelines and jail every riot defendant. This is apparently a policy directive from the courts service, the government department that administers the courts. It is not from the higher judiciary, who speedily distanced themselves from it.

We are only aware of it because the chair of Camberwell Green magistrates, Novello Noades, blurted it out. She called it a \”directive\” but retracted the description later when presumably somebody reminded her that she is supposed to be an independent member of the judiciary.

Although the Ministry of Justice denies responsibility, the directive represents the hostility of much of the public, amplified by government spokespeople, directed specifically to influence the courts. When the community is rightly angry it is the duty of the courts to punish more severely. Serious custodial sentences must follow for \”rioters\” but, whatever the prime minister says, the judiciary\’s role is to dispense individual justice. Magistrates must distinguish the professional criminal from the easily led and every shade of culpability in between – and make the punishment fit the criminal.

This \”directive\”, taken at its fullest, is an attempt to stop that. It, in effect it says that fines and community penalties are abolished for rioters and suspends the carefully constructed sentencing process comprised in the guidelines, which would inevitably result in some non-custodial penalties.

There is ample sentencing allowance in all of the guidelines for the most serious case. Some of the most relevant were formed after the Bradford riots in 2001. They are promulgated by the sentencing council whose president is the lord chief justice. It is made up of judicial, practitioner and academic experts. It sets out to be comprehensive and to bring consistency while maintaining the independence of the judiciary.

Furthermore, its definitive guidelines are binding. For instance, for handling stolen goods of less than £1,000 the usual starting point is a fine or low-level community penalty. Those options widen to include 12 weeks\’ custody if aggravated by the way the goods were obtained. Here they were mainly got through extremely serious and violent burglary. Harm done and personal culpability are the watchwords followed by looking carefully at any mitigation. An early guilty plea, showing remorse and saving trial costs, can justify a discount of up to a third.

Step by step, this carefully guided analysis produces a sentence compatible with legislation and appropriate to the five purposes of sentencing: punishment, protection of the public, deterrence, reform and rehabilitation and reparation to the public.

It seems sinister that there was an attempt to dislodge the lawful process in these cases and substitute blanket imprisonment.

If the separation of powers means anything, it is that the courts are independent of government. Excessive sentences over the past few days – including five months\’ imprisonment for a single mother for handling a pair of stolen shorts, six months\’ for a father receiving two tennis rackets and many children sent into custody – make clear that the directive has had its effect. Serious crime requires serious punishment, but that is always the case.

Indeed, the first crown court sentences have been predictably severe. Perhaps it is important to make a point, even if defendants such as those likely to be known as the Facebook Two win on appeal. The less harsh sentences came from the Manchester judge who announced, possibly in solidarity, that he too was exceeding the guideline.

So what are the prospects of future contested trials being fairly considered in this context of some malleable lay magistrates apparently being prepared to accede to secret agendas? Public craving for convictions will be an open secret. The historic miscarriages of justice were caused by just such an impulse and there is another lesson from history.

During the miners\’ strike it was very difficult to get fair acquittals for strikers at the magistrates\’ court. After the strike, it was hard to get juries from some mining areas to convict. The latter was the community\’s revenge for the former – what it saw as dishonest policing and a biased judiciary.

Although the riots brought a terrifying glimpse of physical chaos, injustice is almost as frightening.