Doctors’ ‘crusade’ to scrap the time limit on abortion
MPs accuse BMA of shock move, just as babies like little Abiageal fuel calls to REDUCE 24-week cut-off
DOCTORS have been accused of launching a ‘crusade’ to abolish the 24-week limit on abortion – which MPs fear would lead to a surge in late terminations.
The Mail on Sunday has learnt that the British Medical Association’s (BMA) ethics committee has published a ‘discussion paper’ titled Decriminalising Abortion. The doctors’ union is now calling on its 160,000 members to put forward proposals on how they want the law to change.
The shock move comes less than a year after this newspaper revealed how Royal College of Midwives (RCM) chief executive Cathy Warwick provoked fury when she decided it should join a campaign to legalise all abortions.
Women can legally have abortions up to 24 weeks’ gestation, but after that terminations are strictly controlled. Campaigners object to the use of criminal law to control abortion and say that it denies women control over the own bodies.
Last night, anti-abortion campaigners said they believed there was now a concerted campaign to abolish abortion laws 50 years after 1967’s landmark Abortion Act.
Labour MP Robert Flello, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary ProLife Group, said: ‘It is my fear the BMA is embarking on a misguided crusade to scrap the 24-week limit, which would have tragic consequences in terms of late terminations. Women could then terminate unborn children at any stage – right up to birth – without facing criminal sanctions.
‘That would lead to the unacceptable situation where unborn children who could survive outside the womb were being killed.’
In 2015, about 230 of the 198,000 abortions carried out in the UK were later than 24 weeks. But in some English hospitals up to 70 per cent of babies born at 23 weeks now survive, fuelling calls from campaigners to reduce the age cut-off.
Last spring the RCM joined the British Pregnancy Advisory Service’s We Trust Women campaign, which explicitly states it wants ‘the abortion time limit’ to be ‘removed from criminal law’. The RCM was condemned for failing to consult its members – or consider the moral rights of the unborn child.
Despite the furore, the BMA is now considering following suit. In December it wrote to members
‘Abolishing the law is totally abominable’
highlighting ‘decriminalising abortion’ as one of six ‘topical areas of interest’ on which they might like to submit draft motions for this summer’s BMA conference.
Last month it wrote again, including its 52-page booklet Decriminalisation Of Abortion: A Discussion Paper. This claims to be an evenhanded guide containing ‘a number of arguments, put forward by others, in favour of and against decriminalisation’.
It states: ‘These invite the question – what role, if any, should the criminal law play in setting parameters for the provision and administration of abortion?’
But Mr Flello said it was ‘completely misleading’ to claim the document was neutral, adding: ‘There’s no discussion whatsoever about the most controversial element of “decriminalisation” – the scrapping of time limits and introduction of legal abortion up to birth. Neither is there any mention that more and more extremely premature babies appear to be surviving.’ Under the 1967 Act a woman can have an abortion up to 24 weeks if two doctors agree that continuing with t the pregnancy would put her physical or mental health at risk. After that abortions are only allowed to prevent ‘grave permanent injury’ or d death to the woman, or if the baby will be born with serious disabilities. BMA members have until April 7 to submit draft motions. A spokesman said: ‘T ‘The BMA does not have policy o on the decriminalisation of ab abortion. This paper does not in include recommendations about whether, and if so how, abortion should be decriminalised. It aims simply to inform debate.’
Conservative MP Maria Caulfield said: ‘While claiming it does not have a policy on decriminalisation, the discussion paper is an attempt by the BMA to steer the abortion conversation in a particular direction.’
Pro-choice groups want Britain to follow Canada and parts of Australia, where abortion has been decriminalised.
They argue the law change has not led to an increase in late abortions in either country.
The Rt Rev Philip Egan, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, described any move to weaken or abolish abortion law as ‘totally abominable’.
He said: ‘With all the advances in medical science, now it is possible for a child to be born very prematurely and be saved.’