Abortion law: Time limit stays at 24 weeks

MPs have voted against proposals to reduce to the abortion time limit to 22 weeks, 20 weeks, 16 weeks, and 12 weeks.

In a series of votes, Members of Parliament rejected options ranging from 12 to 22 weeks.

The closest vote, on a 22-week limit, was defeated by 304 to 233. Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ proposal for a 20 week limit was defeated by 332 votes to 190.

A bid to cut the limit to 12 weeks was opposed by 393 votes to 71. A further attempt to get the limit down to 16 weeks was defeated by 387 votes to 84.

In the first major challenge to Britain’s abortion laws since 1990, when the legal limit was lowered from 28 to 24 weeks, MPs voted on a series of alternative limits of 12,16, 20 and 22 weeks - all of which were rejected.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and most of the cabinet voted to keep the existing 24 limit, as did Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. But Catholic cabinet ministers Ruth Kelly, Des Browne and Paul Murphy voted for the lowest option - 12 weeks.

Conservative leader David Cameron voted for a 20 week limit and then for a cut to a 22 week limit - which was backed by most of the shadow cabinet.

Mr Brown had offered Labour MPs a free vote on the issue as a matter of conscience.

The votes followed two impassioned debates on the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill - the biggest shake-up of fertility law for nearly 20 years. Earlier the government saw off another challenge to the bill when MPs rejected a cross-party move for doctors to consider the need for a ‘father and a mother’ before allowing IVF treatment.

Health Minister Dawn Primarolo insisted there was no evidence requiring the abortion laws to be changed and said changing it would force the small number of women seeking late abortions to go elsewhere.

‘Wouldn’t it be appalling if we drove women back to where they were before the 1967 (Abortion) Act?,’ she told MPs.

She said the limit had always been linked to the ‘potential viability of the fetus outside of the womb’: ‘That was the case in 1967. It was the case in 1990 and certainly the case now.’

The vote followed months of lobbying by both sides

During the debate Ms Dorries said she believed the right of a woman to choose had its limits. ‘I believe a baby has rights. Those rights kick in if that baby were born it would have a chance of life and if it feels pain as part of the abortion,’ she said.

Ex-minister Edward Leigh, a father-of-six, who pressed for a 12-week limit, said it would bring Britain into line with the rest of Europe. ‘In modern Britain the most dangerous place to be is in your mother’s womb. It should be a place of sanctity,’ he said.

Labour’s Claire Curtis-Thomas said she was not opposed to abortion, believing women had the right to choose. But she added: ‘I can’t accept that we keep the limit where it stands where there is a possibility of life. The majority of people are deeply uncomfortable with that prospect.’

Labour’s Chris McCafferty said restricting when a woman could have a termination ‘is just prolonging the agony’ and was ‘cruel, cynical, ill-informed and inhumane’. ‘It’s a basic misconception that women with an unwanted pregnancy should only enter into the actual decision-making process after counselling with someone they do not know,’ she said.

Lib Dem Dr John Pugh said: ‘There are people in our world today in no way inferior to us in capacity, intelligence and beauty who were born at 22 weeks. That ought to give us cause for reflection.’

MPs reject cut in abortion limit. BBC News, 21 May 2008

Also read:

How MPs voted on abortion limit. BBC News, 21 May 2008

In quotes: Abortion debate. BBC News, 20 May 2008

‘Fight continues’ on abortions. BBC News, 21 May 2008