Abortion in the UK

Here's what happened in the UK

The Abortion Act 1967 sought to clarify the law. Introduced by David Steel and subject to heated debate it allowed for legal abortion on a number of grounds, with the added protection of free provision through the National Health Service. The Act was passed on 27 October 1967 and came into effect on 27 April 1968.

The Act provided a defence for Doctors performing an abortion on any of the following grounds:

To save the woman's life
To prevent grave permanent injury to the woman's physical or mental health
Under 28 weeks to avoid injury to the physical or mental health of the woman
Under 28 weeks to avoid injury to the physical or mental health of the existing child(ren)
If the child was likely to be severely physically or mentally handicapped.

Later laws

Changes to the 1967 Abortion Act were introduced in Parliament through the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. The time limits were lowered from 28 weeks to 24 for most cases to reflect alleged improvements in medical technology justifying the lowering. Restrictions were removed for late abortions in cases of risk to life, fetal abnormality, or grave physical and mental injury to the woman.

Since 1967, members of Parliament have introduced a number of private member's bills to change the abortion law. Four resulted in substantive debate (1975, 1977, 1979 and 1987) but all failed. The Lane Committee investigated the workings of the Act in 1974 and declared its support.

In May 2008, MPs voted to retain the current legal limit of 24 weeks. Amendments proposing reductions to 22 weeks and 20 weeks were defeated by 304 to 233 votes and 332 to 190 votes respectively.

In 2009, the number of abortions was 189,100. In one year alone. No wonder modern civilization is on the brink of God knows what....