Eroding women's rights to abortion

"Reducing the current legal time limit for abortions from 24 to 22 weeks would further erode a woman's right to control her body and fertility. We believe that women should have safe, legal, free access to abortion on request within the current legal time limit of 24 weeks", said Anne Quesney, Director of Abortion Rights.

The current UK abortion law, one of the most restrictive in Europe, does not entitle women to abortion on request at any time in the pregnancy. Two doctors' signatures are still required before women can access abortion services. As it stands, the law is often responsible for delays.

If the review were to give rise, instead, to abortion on request, even up to 14 weeks, this would substantially improve women's lives. The latest abortion figures clearly show that post 20 week terminations only make up less than 2% of the total, with 89% taking place before 13 weeks. Late (post 20 week) abortions are NEVER taken lightly by anyone involved.

To reduce the number of late abortions, a reduction in the legal time limit is not needed so much as other changes in how we deal with abortion.

We recommend the following:

• to make access to unbiased abortion information more readily available, and to make abortion itself a normal part of medical provision
• to stop stigmatising those (especially the very young) who seek abortion
• to provide abortion on request and cut those terrible variations in waiting time (one Primary Care Trust admitted that abortion patients can wait more than a month for treatment!)
• to provide early medical abortion (prior to 9 weeks) in GP surgeries.

Abortion Rights is a new campaigning and advocacy organisation formed by the merger of the National Abortion Campaign (NAC) and the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA).