A majority of the general public don’t support MPs’ proposals to decriminalise abortion, recent polling has found.
In the survey of two,011 UK adults by Whitestone Insight, 55 per cent agreed that abortion should remain illegal beyond the present 24-week limit. Only 16 per cent support changing the establishment.
Women were more likely than men to imagine it should remain illegal (57 per cent versus 54 per cent), and over three-quarters (71 per cent) said that a year-long prison sentence for a lady who aborted her baby between 32 and 34 weeks was “about right or too short”.
The plans are contained in an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill tabled by Diana Johnson, Labour chair of the house affairs committee. The amendment says that girls who end their abortions beyond the legal cut-off date of 24 weeks mustn’t be prosecuted.
A contrasting amendment from Tory MP Caroline Ansell proposes lowering the abortion limit to 22 weeks. Supporters say this may bring the UK’s legal limit consistent with advances in medical science which have led to more extremely premature babies surviving.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said, “The extreme change to the law proposed by Diana Johnson would remove current offences that prevent women from performing their very own abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
“This would allow healthy babies to be aborted for any reason, including sex-selective purposes, right as much as birth.
“It would likely result in a tragic increase within the variety of babies’ lives being ended through late-term abortions performed at home, in addition to the lives of many more women being endangered.
“This extreme and radical abortion law has no place within the UK. This polling clearly shows that the general public don’t support this modification to the law. We are calling on MPs to reject Johnson’s amendment.”
The latest polling reflects the findings of past surveys by SavantaComRes which also found that a majority of the general public support lowering the legal cut-off date for abortion.Â
The cut-off date was last modified in 1990 when it was lowered from 28 weeks to 24 weeks because of this of improved survival rates for terribly premature babies.
