I don’t think that by changing abortion law (limiting it to 20 weeks) irrationally could improve things. It may be a grave mistake for not listening to the reasons of those who choose abortion as only alternative to their problems.

On the other hand, the problem could be a lack of support and understanding those who eventually find that they have to do it for many reasons unknown to a many of us, who don’t have proper understanding and knowledge of what is happening.

I wonder for instance, if we improve and secure the life of many of those who choose abortion, would they still do so. The statistics should explain the area of social problems that lead us to this problem in the first place. Is that poverty, cultural issues, etc.

We may reduce the number of abortions by talking the main issues rather than by criminalizing it.

While there are many anti-abortionists who really sincerely care about the zygote/foetus (they at least don't try to call it a baby), few adopt the hard to adopt kids. Fewer yet lobby as hard for improved care and nutrition for those kids. Once they are born, right to lifers could care less. Harsh you say? When was the last time you saw the right to life groups protesting as vociferously about the genocide in Darfur, where kids are getting killed in the most horrible way. None of them lining streets with signs "genocide is murder" or "honk if you want to stop the killings in Darfur." No Cardinals calling for a ban on communion to politicians who do nothing about genocide. This disconnect between almost rabid hysterical paens to the unborn and no concern at all for the children once born strongly suggests it's all about making women--not men--bear the "burden" of having done the deed. Ooooh, sinful, innit? The sin is their lack of caring for the born.

The NHS cannot provide full screening for serious abnormalities until 21 weeks in my area. In fact the "Nuchal Scan" which can detect problems early is not available at all on the NHS in my area - it has to be paid for privately at a cost of approx £150.

We are not just talking Down's Syndrome here - we are talking about tragically serious abnormalities which would cause a baby to die within days/hours of birth.

Maybe we should be looking at funding more research into earlier screening.

No-one has an abortion at 24 weeks lightly.

I cannot really understand why it should be left too late to have an abortion; it is clear that the longer the foetus grows the nearer it comes to being a life and a sensory being. I feel that in most cases the abortion should be completed before 13 weeks and only in the most exceptional cases (medical mostly) it can be extended...the problem is that the bureaucracy surrounding any extensions for individuals who are in exceptional circumstances could be so heavy and burdensome that one has to wonder if things are best left as they are...but the present situation is open to some debate.

A few points:
1. Planet earth is overpopulated for its renewable resources, especially given the effects of current and future climate changes on the already most over-populated regions.
2. This hard fact is not generally politically nor religiously acceptable.
3. There are already millions of unwanted children.
4. There appear to be not very many folk prepared to take any of them on.
5. Abortion is no laughing matter for any woman at any time in any circumstances - its usually just the best of a very bad job...
6 . I cannot get away from the conviction that the cost of preventing an abortion should be the full and lasting cost of life long support for the resultant developed individual. The churches in UK are particularly very coy about this.

MPs press for reduction in abortion time limits on the grounds that a foetus under 24 weeks has a good chance of surviving - even though medical evidence does not support this. The Home Secretary restores cannabis to Class B on the grounds that it is more harmful to health than was previously thought - even though medical evidence does not support this.
Are we seeing a pattern here? Why do politicians without scientific knowledge or experience get to make arbitrary decisions about scientific issues?

How about some figures on the number of late terminations and the reasons for them. Britain has one of the later deadlines, does France with a lower limit have a problem with back street abortion? The high rate of abortions in the UK is clearly not desirable and given the free provision (for women) of contraception indicates a serious failure in British society's mores and education. Personally I think a case can be made for shifting the non-medical emergency limit down to 20 weeks, it will raise the pressure to bring in early diagnosis of serious abnormalities and it will maintain a buffer between the date at which a fetus can be aborted and that at which it is potentially viable outside the womb.( you certainly don't have to be a scientist to understand that). I would much rather see a concerted effort to improve the quality of Britain's attitude to sexuality with its appalling soup of mixed messages that our young people receive, More than 40 years after the so called sexual revolution we are still a nation of titterers behind the bikesheds.

I don't understand why a low survival rate of premature babies should be a pro-choice argument, because it vividly pictures the fact that it is a baby you have to kill once it is out of the womb when the abortion takes place at 24 weeks (6 months !!)
I'm pro-choice but I'm in favour of halving the current limit to 12 weeks, except for some extreme medical or criminal cases to be carefully defined by the law. This could come with a clear re-affirmation of women's right to abortion by the legislator, so that the limit reduction is not used by anti-abortion people. Most European countries have a limit close to 12 weeks, and England for that matter is still very sadly an outlyer.

An interesting article that should be read, can be found here:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/337039_focus28.html
or
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/27/4853/

Why everything should be a 'woman's right to choose'?

What about the man - the father of the child. Do he have no say? If he not want a child and woman wants, HE must subsididise his 'one night stand' all his life and have child he not wants. Perhaps men must have the 'right to choose' - to opt out of finance responsibilty in legal way. Or have right to make woman have abortion too.

I think some womans are very selfish. They wnat the power and men not having the power.

Thing is the whole frame of this debate is wrong, as a professional science communicator i suggest that the science of whether we can save a fetus at 24, 22, 20 or lower is irrelevant. The issue here is THAT IT IS A WOMANS RIGHT TO CHOOSE END OF STORY, whether you agree with abortion or not.
The woeful lack of facilities in UK plc is a national scandal. Abortion is not a nice experience for anyone involved. If a woman chooses an abortion she should get whatever support she needs, if she chooses to have the baby she gets all the support she needs.
What she doesn't need and what the country doesn't need is self-serving pious so called pro-life individuals and organisations moralising and preaching. I see that Anne W and Geoff Hoon ( minister for killing Iraqi and Afghani children is in this camp. Pro-life they make me sick to the very core of my being.
Last point whatever the law if your rich you can terminate ay Harley st, if your not the backstreet forceps await - enough said keep the limit and support the right to choose.

[Last point whatever the law if your rich you can terminate ay Harley st,]

Indeed Mark, how many mistresses of the princes of the church have done this as well as those of the pro-life MPs. As ever it's one rule for them and another for the rest of us!

The hypocritical double standards of the church and politicians is staggering beyond belief.

The abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link is something that has been known about since 1957 (see www.polycarp.org for further info).

So, if the ABC link has been known about for over 50 years, why aren't women being told? I would suggest the answer is two-fold:-

1)Women's health has been sacrificed on the altar of 'right-to-choose' ideology

2)Abortion is a highly lucrative industry - and it's providers want to continue lining their coffers.

Abortion is also the biggest preventable cause of mental illness among women.

Fine by me. No problem in fostering someone else's child instead of having it aborted.

It has always been a tactic of the pro-life lobby to attempt to whittle away the legal limit for the provision of abortion. This is not their main goal. They wish to eradicate the provision of abortion in the UK or wherever they operate. Having opposed them for many years, it is important to point out here that they neither recognise nor care about the undeniable fact that a society without safe and legal abortion will simply see an increase in female mortality through botched, gruesome and amateur attempts to end a pregnancy. There were many nurses in the 1950s and earlier who both witnessed in the course of their work the horrific effects of an attempt to self-abort, yet who, when finding themselves pregnant, had little choice but to go to the back street "practitioners" or to attempt the same. Many of them died. We must never be side-tracked by technological developments or emotive photographs. If a woman's right to choose is overruled, the result is a return to abortion- related female mortality. The crazies may see it as a judgement from their God. We should defend this right as one fought for and won and an essential element in the fight for women's rights. Abortion is distasteful, unpleasant and stressful for the woman. With the provision of a full, overt sex education is schools and free contraception, the number of abortions solicited should be reduced. For the rest, it should still be up to the woman carrying the child to make the decision. Anything else is a surrender to those who would take further steps to infringe on the rights of both men and women to make choices regarding how they live their lives.

anyone who believes abortion is easyfor women is misguided to say the least
but somre things are more important than
the holy grail of choice which often does not exist.
However .given the number of couples seeking children, who cannot conceive.adoption is something which could help excepting dire medical circumstances.
oner can only wonder at the brilliance and expertise denied to our nation and the world
nobody knows, how these people would have turned out, for they a collection of cells is a person,abotion has been sanitised by words like termination, it's not a train journey, how hypicritical is it for those in the wealthy west to criticise other vcountries for treating human life as diposable, whenpeople make judgements on the quality of life after having looked at foetus
in the womb. there are millions of people with disabilities who are not a drain on resources but contribute massively, yet some could have and still could have been judged to be too much trouble. who are these people the gene police if we believe life has any worth we must ensure conclusions on issues like thisshow that in Britain we do believe in such worth

According to the London-based Pension and Population Research Institute (a registered charity), abortion is the "best predictor" of breast cancer trends.

Researcher Dr Patrick Carroll has predicted an overall increase of 50.9% in the cancer rate in England and Wales by the year 2029.

So, what? Well, two-thirds of abortions in the UK are actually funded by the taxpayer, whether he/she likes it or not. And who will pick up the NHS tab for treating the inevitable breast cancer fall-out? You've guessed it - the taxpayer.

One doesn't have to be religious to see the utter folly of this. The NHS is in effect 'digging its own grave'.

So much ink gets spilled about 'human rights'.

Surely the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to be born. Without this, all other 'human rights' are meaningless....

Disabled and handicapped children are in the world to put our charity to the test. Has everyone forgotten Hitler and the consequences of his evil 'eugenics' programme? Once we start denying babies the right to be born because of cleft palate, the 'wrong' sex or the wrong colour of hair, where do we stop?

Abortions carried out on the grounds of 'rape', incidentally, number only about 0.05%. There is an old saying that 'hard cases make bad laws' - and the 1967 Abortion Act is a classic example.

All those in favour of abortion - HAVE BEEN BORN!!

Whether a baby can or cannot survive intact after x weeks gestation is irrelevant to the issue. If you are planning to insist that a mother cannot have an abortion and the mother disagrees with your wish what are you going to do about it - put her in prison until the baby delivers? If safe abortion is not available then many of these women are so desperate they will seek out unsafe abortion and risk killing both themselves and the child. Making abortion illegal does not make it go away - it merely increases the risks.

In this debate, those who are pro-life like to forget or simple ignore the pain that can be inflicted on those who are born to mothers who do not want them.

Mothers forced to carry children full term, that they do not want, also suffer mental anguish and depression and are stigmatized because we as a society expect mothers to love the children they carry full term unconditional. This is simple not the case.

I have a close friend who was born to a mother who did not want him. He was the product of a 'one-night stand' when she unfourtunatly fell pregnant with him. She had planned to have an abortion but her father talked her out of it.

When she did finally give birth she was unable to bond with him and the result was a troubled and abusive relationship, violence was a normal part of his childhood. He has recounted to me stories of his trouble childhood which sometimes lead him to contemplate suicide, from the young age of 9 and onwards. Finally she kicked him out of the family home at the age of 16 when she felt that her obligation to him as mother was over.

From then on he was on his own and has struggled through life ever since, and the anguish of his early years and the uphill struggle to try a build a product and stable life has lead him to consider suicide on many occasions, as he wanted to simple end the pain she had left him with.

Once a few years ago during another of their many augments his mother attempted to emotionally blackmail him by saying "well I could have had a abortion". His response was "I wish you had!" This was true as he has told me on many occasion that he still wishes that she had and then maybe his unborn soul would have gone to child whose family had loved and cherished him, instead of a cold and abusive one.

For those who believe that adoption is a realistic alternative to abortion are dangerously naive as the many stories of child brought up in children homes and the care system often detail abuse and neglect, with the result being a childhood of pain and anguish. Child who are brought up in care system are severely disadvantage and ultimately live on the fringes of our society and do not grow up to fulfill their true potential. While some overcome the trials of their early lives many other do not and continue to live with mental health problems, depression, and alcohol and drug abuse.

Since the 1970's adoption numbers in the UK have plummeted so that a child put up for adoption today is more like to grow in care than ever before. It is a cold reality that in this world if your parents do not want or love you then it is very unlikely that anyone else will.

The ugly alternative to an abortion is a life of 60 to 70 years of pain, anguish and violence. Is that really a better alternative.

Ms. Furedi says, 'However, the rising number of abortions demonstrates that abortion remains necessary.' Her argument seems then that while there is a growing demand for Abortions then the solution is to meet it by having even more terminations. She might have considered the possibility that the foetus may not be viable before 22/23 weeks but the foetus does have feelings and a future if only it was allowed. She might argue that the future is not bright for any number of foetus's but then we are condoning anticipated mercy killing.

My view is based firstly on my experience that a 16 week foetus does somersaults or overhead kicks when it suddenly wakes up at 8.00pm. I placed my hand just below my wife's ribcage and felt my daughter's kicks. She is 21 now and I should have encouraged her more to take up football.

Last week I was reminded of the fact that a foetus sucks its thumb in the womb at 20 weeks or earlier. We all know why it does, or I presume so. It seeks comfort and support at this time and it has feelings, and because in 210,000 cases last year that foetus was not wanted, it was terminated. So if Ms. Furedi gets her way the trend may well continue and rise.

Obviously abortion has nothing to do with science

It is the breaking of a link of life. Links that stretch back to the dawn of time.

Spiritually it is probably the worst thing one could do to another.

This is made worse by the cynical disregard of pro-abortionists of the plight of women who have regretted having an abortion.

It is made worse by cynical false arguments. What is the worst thing that could happen if abortion was stopped for silly reasons? When abortion was illegal there was still a stigma attached to having a child outside marriage. Even then the number of women who harmed themselves were tiny. Now it would be tinier still, if any.

The number of current victims of abortion, those who regretted having an abortion would certainly seem to outnumber those who would seek illegal abortion rather than abortion elsewhere.

I agree that disabled children born need all the help and love in the world. However, I have been involved with many families with severely disabled children who can not cope with the disabled child (and I am not talking children with cleft palates) - it can negatively impact on the lives of not only the parents but also other children in the family. Sadly, the support services available for severely disabled children and their families is appalling because of lack of funding. There are cases where mothers have who killed their severely disabled children before killing themselves - who does that benefit?

Often a disability is either not picked up antenatally or occurs at the time or shortly after birth and families are forced to try to cope (see above). If the disability is detected antenatally even up to 24 weeks why shouldn't the mother be allowed to contemplate abortion when discovering the disability and considering the impact it would have on the disabled child, the mother and the rest of the family?

Unless you have been involved with the true impact of a severe disability on a family do not presume to be able to determine the availablility of abortions.

Helen - we consider ourselves to be the 'smartest creatures' on the planet. Do you know of any other species that deliberately kills its unborn?