There is not enough scientific evidence to justify lowering the legal abortion limit below 24 weeks, Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister, has said.
Appearing before the Commons Science and Technology Committee, Ms Primarolo said that nothing had persuaded the Department of Health that survival rates had improved for extremely premature babies born before that time and defended the need for two doctors’ signatures to approve an abortion.
She told MPs: “The Department of Health’s view, and the advice to me, is that – and that’s why there is no proposal from the Government to amend the Act – the Act works as intended and doesn’t require further amendment at the present time.”
The anti-abortion campaign group, the ProLife Alliance, wants the upper limit cut to 20 weeks. But the British Medical Association says that the number surviving at 24 weeks is still “extremely small”. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Nursing also maintain that the upper limit for abortions should remain at 24 weeks.
Ms Primarolo was giving evidence to the Select Committee, which will publish a report into the issues surrounding abortion and the medical advances since the Abortion Act was passed in 1967 – rather than the ethical or moral issues associated with time limits.
The inquiry is intended to inform a parliamentary debate expected to begin later this year over a Bill setting out changes to fertility law. MPs on both sides of the argument will use the debate as a vehicle for changes to the law by moving backbench amendments. They will also try to extend abortion law to Northern Ireland, which is exempt.
MPs expect the draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill to be introduced in the Commons before Christmas and are preparing for key debates and votes on abortion law early next year.
Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon and a leading pro-choice campaigner, said: “The 1967 [Abortion] Act would benefit from being brought up-to-date with modern clinical practice and a more respectful and modern approach to the autonomy of women, which is not dependent of getting a doctor’s permission.”
Ann Widdecombe, the anti-abortion Tory MP, said: “We are all geared up for the fact that there will be a very, very serious attempt to liberalise the law. We will resist it but the parliamentary arithmetic will decide it.”
Anti-abortion campaigners are preparing massive public campaigns to coincide with the parliamentary passage of the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which is set to become one of the most controversial measure of Gordon Brown’s first full session.
Some of its other measures are also likely to generate huge public and parliamentary controversy, including a move to allow gay couples jointly to seek fertility treatment.
In evidence given earlier to the committee, the British Medical Association stated that when the time limit was lowered from 28 to 24 weeks in 1990 – the last time the Abortion Act was amended – a “key argument was that this was the stage at which the foetus was considered viable”.
It added: “It needs to be acknowledged that viability is difficult to define. For example, whether it is understood to mean simply that the foetus is capable of being born alive, or at the other extreme, that it is capable of surviving through childhood with no, or minimal, disabilities.”
According to the Department of Health, there were 193,000 abortions in England and Wales last year, of which 89 per cent were performed in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.
David Rose, Greg Hurst
The Times Online
