Curious, isn’t it, how sentiment changes on a critical issue all of a sudden? Not so long ago, the prospect of turning a blind eye to someone who carried out an abortion in the last trimester of pregnancy – that is, on a foetus of six to nine months’ gestation – would have seemed unthinkable.
Is this trend towards liberalising abortion really a sign of progress?
At present, the only circumstances in which you can abort a foetus after 24 weeks is if the mother’s life is at risk or the child would be born with a ‘severe’ disability (which has included cleft palate and hare lips, remediable conditions) – which is itself pretty hard to square with the spirit of equalities legislation, as Liam Fox points out.
But now the Criminal Justice Bill is coming up, with an amendment tabled by Labour MP Diana Johnson which would exempt women from prosecution for going ahead with abortions after the current time limit.
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