Tory MP to publish new abortion bill

Nadine Dorries has said she will publish a new version of her bill to reduce the time limit for abortions, which would lower the limit to 20 weeks from the current 24 weeks.

Ms Dorries’ previous proposals to cut the maximum period to 21 weeks failed by 187 votes to 108 in the Commons in October. The new bill also calls for a one-week ‘cooling-off’ period between a request for an abortion and it being performed, to provide time for counselling. The previous bill stipulated a 10-day period. Labour MP Chris McCafferty has called the cooling-off proposal ‘an attack on women’s reproductive rights’.

Announcing the publication of the new version, Ms Dorries, MP for Mid Bedfordshire, said:

‘Many people are not aware that in order for a late abortion to take place for social reasons, feticide must first take place; this process can take up to two days and involves a lethal injection being administered into the fetal heart via a cannular through the mother’s abdominal wall. When a doctor is sure the fetal heart has stopped, the dead fetus is delivered on day two using forceps. Clearly this is a barbaric practice and I will not stop campaigning until it is outlawed. How can it possibly be right that on one hospital ward we have doctors working to save the life of a baby born at 22 weeks, yet on another a doctor is aborting one of the same gestation?”

She said that she hoped the bill would remain on the list of pending parliamentary business until the 40th anniversary next year of the 1967 Abortion Act, which legalised the termination of fetuses up to the 24th week of pregnancy.

New call to reduce abortion limit, BBC News, 14 December 2006

Also read:

MP’s time limit bill rejected, Abortion Review, 1 November 2006