What the law says: there must be a risk to health

ABORTION has been legal since the 1967 Abortion Act, which set out the grounds on which a woman’s pregnancy may be terminated.

The key clause of the law says an abortion can be performed if two doctors decide that ‘the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, or of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated’.

The 24-week limit was added to the law in 1990 when MPs became worried about late-term abortion against a background of the growing chances of premature babies surviving.

Another clause of the 1967 law says that ‘account may be taken of the pregnant woman’s actual or reasonably foreseeable environment’. This has been taken as legal justification for abortion of foetuses on grounds of sex, the argument being that women from some cultural backgrounds may be at risk if they have girls.

All but a few of the abortions in England and Wales every year are carried out on the legal grounds that the pregnancy threatens the woman’s mental health.

Those who do not comply with the 1967 Act can be prosecuted under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which forbids other attempts to procure abortion.

Many of the doctors who approve abortions never see the patient for whom they are making a termination possible, and for whom they are certifying that pregnancy carries a serious health risk.