Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

Fathers not needed, say MPs,
and abortion law stays as it is

Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Doctors will no longer be required to consider a child's need for a father when providing IVF, and the upper time limit for abortion will not change, the House of Commons has decided.

The controversial votes took place on Tuesday 20 May, as MPs debated key issues in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in a Committee of the Whole House.

Triangle bullet Breakdown of votes

The Bill contains measures to remove the requirement for doctors to consider a child's need for a father when providing fertility treatment. Sadly, an amendment tabled by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith to block this move was defeated.

Mr Duncan Smith said: "It is as though we are saying to couples, especially in the heterosexual world, that fathers are less important than mothers and that, therefore, they do not need to be considered."

Although MPs were given opportunities to lower the upper time limit for abortion to 12, 16, 20 or 22 weeks, none of the amendments were passed, in spite of evidence that more and more babies born before 24 weeks' gestation now survive with specialist care.

MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, who has led a campaign to reduce the limit to 20 weeks, told the House of the botched abortions she witnessed as a nurse:

"A little boy was aborted into a cardboard bedpan, which was thrust into my arms. When I looked into the cardboard bedpan, the little boy was gasping for breath through the mucus and amniotic fluid. I stood by the sluice with him in my arms, in the bedpan, for seven minutes while he gasped for breath. A botched abortion became a live birth, and then, seven minutes later, a death."