MPs launch bid for easier abortions
Updated on 08 July 2008
Women will be able to get an abortion more easily under proposals put forward by a cross-party group of MPs.
They include allowing abortion-inducing drugs to be taken in the home and reducing the number of doctors needed to approve terminations from two to one.
The plans, which are sure to be vigorously opposed by pro-life MPs, are being put forward in amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill for debate next Monday.
Their sponsors include Labour's former health secretary Frank Dobson, Tory frontbencher Jacqui Lait and Liberal Democrat science spokesman Evan Harris.
If successful, they would be the first changes to the 1967 Abortion Act since 1990, when the 28-week maximum period for terminations was reduced to 24 weeks.
An attempt to further cut the limit to 22 weeks was defeated in the Commons in May.
Now, MPs in favour of a liberalising the abortion laws are trying to implement contentious recommendations put forward by the Science and Technology Select Committee last year.
Unusually, the suggestions were not signed off by the entire committee. Nadine Dorries, a Tory, and Bob Spink, who has recently left the Conservative Party and joined the UK Independence Party, produced their own report.
The committee said there was no reason why women seeking an abortion should need the approval of two doctors and might be causing delays. That requirement would be scrapped by the new proposals, as would the need for early-stage abortion drugs to be taken on approved premises.
Another major change would be to allow nurses, with the relevant qualifications, to undertake terminations and increasing the number of places where they could be performed.
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