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Leading abortion clinic backs 20-week limit

-04/04/05

One of Britain’s largest abortion clinics wants to cut the upper limit for abortions to 20 weeks because advances in medical science mean that the babies are “potentially viable”.

Echoing arguments made by the Archbishop of Canterbury recently.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, writing in the Sunday Times, said scientific progress and the “rising number” of abortions made a debate on the issue essential.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, called for abortion to become an election issue. The Methodist church also said it was important that serious issues such as abortion were revisited from time to time as “changing medical science altered the landscape in which the debate takes place”.

Marie Stopes International, the largest provider of abortions outside the NHS, said yesterday it wants the controversial 24-week limit – the highest in Europe – to be cut by four weeks.

Dr Tim Black, chief executive of Marie Stopes International, which performs around 60,000 abortions each year, said: “Public opinion is in favour of abortion but falls off quite quickly when we get to 20 weeks because there is a perception that the foetus is potentially viable. We do feel that in light of medical developments the upper limit should come down.”

A spokesman for Marie Stopes said yesterday it has held that view “privately” for some time but has now decided to go public at a time when abortion has become once again a highly political issue.

It said it was aware that it might be treated “like a pariah” for having gone public.

Last month, Michael Howard, the Tory leader, reignited the debate after saying during an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine that he would be in favour of reducing the upper limit to 22 or 20 weeks.

However the latest statement by Marie Stopes could indicate a move towards a consensus in an often polarised debate, and could therefore put pressure on politicians such as Tony Blair to reconsider their belief that the current law should be left as it is.

But Marie Stopes said it would support a reduction only if the “ridiculous and anachronistic” law that a woman cannot obtain an abortion without written permission from two doctors was abolished. It would agree with the upper limit being cut to 20 weeks only if a woman could have an abortion before the 12th week of her pregnancy “on demand” without having to obtain permission.

A spokesman said many women who visited one of Marie Stopes’s nine clinics in England tried to have an abortion in the very early stages of pregnancy but were delayed by a month or more due to delays or difficulties speaking to a doctor.

Abortions performed in the first three months of a pregnancy are much more straightforward than later terminations as they do not require a general anaesthetic.

Of the 181,600 abortions performed in England and Wales in 2003, 87 per cent were on women less than 13 weeks pregnant.

The most common age to have an abortion is between 20 and 24.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, of which Rowan Williams is a member, said it was “very wary” of proposals to reduce the limit because they were always linked to other moves, such as waiving the need for doctors’ consent, which could increase the number of abortions.

Paul Tully, the general secretary, said: “Any reduction in the number of abortions would be welcome. However, reducing time limits doesn’t necessarily mean reducing abortions. The last time MPs thought they had a chance to reduce the time limit, they ended up widening the law.

“Abortions have continued to rise to record levels since. One must consider carefully what effect any given proposal will have.”