UK doctors urge MPs to lower abortion limit from 24 weeks

Over 700 doctors in the UK have urged MPs to lower the abortion time limit from 24 weeks to 22 weeks.

The doctors addressed a letter to all 650 MPs exhorting them to support an amendment to the Government’s Criminal Justice Bill to reduce the abortion time limit.

The medics, who range from GPs to senior consultants, said that the reduction is “long overdue” in light of the fact that increased numbers of babies born at 22 or 23 weeks now survive. Previously, this was not the case.

They referred to survival rates of babies born at 23 weeks as having doubled from two in 10 to four in 10 in the last decade, which has resulted in new guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine which enables doctors to intervene to save premature babies from 22 weeks.

The doctors likened 2024 to 1990, when the time limit was reduced from 28 weeks to 24 weeks as technological and medical advances resulted in higher survival rates.

Britain is out of step with the rest of the EU, they claimed, where the average abortion time limit across member states is 12 weeks.

A 2022 ComRes poll revealed that 70 percent of women and 60 percent of the British public supported a reduction in the time limit down to 20 weeks.

Conservative MP Caroline Ansell has tabled the amendment and has the support of a cross-party group of more than 30 MPs. It is one of two amendments to the Bill due to be debated and voted on this month that would make significant changes to the UK’s abortion laws. The other, which is backed by Dame Diana Johnson, would decriminalise abortion after 24 weeks.

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Jason Osborne

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This article was first printed on Gript and is republished here with permission

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