CULTURE secretary Nadine Dorries has called for the abortion limit in the UK to be brought down by a month, which would introduce restrictions on the availability of abortion.
However, she also argued that the rule that two doctors must approve the procedure should be “abolished”, and insisted she is pro-choice.
Despite this, she still stated in an interview to Times Radio that “20 weeks is where it [the abortion time limit] should be”, and that 24 weeks is “too high”.
Her comments follow the recent overturning of Roe vs Wade in the US, which has been described as a “grim setback” for women’s rights.
Dorries’ voting record reveals that in 2008, she voted to reduce the abortion limit to a shockingly mere 12 weeks. More recently, she voted against the decriminalisation of abortion in England and Wales in 2017.
In 2020, she abstained from a vote on introducing buffer zones around abortion clinics, which would have criminalised protests outside of clinics.
The 1967 Abortion Act set the time limit to perform abortions at 28 weeks, reduced to 24 weeks in 1990.
The British Medical Association previously against reducing the limit to 20 weeks, with Dr John Chisholm stating that reasons for late term abortions included “failure to recognise pregnancy earlier, delays in seeking abortion earlier due to changes in personal circumstances, late diagnosis of fetal abnormality and difficulty in accessing abortion”.
The number of late term abortions is very low in the UK, with official 2019 abortion statistics showing 82% of abortions were performed under 10 weeks.
