Prominent backbench MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has called for the abortion limit to be lowered, but an abortion campaigner wants the law to simply be “a blank sheet of paper”.
Pro-life Rees-Mogg told BBC Radio 5 Live on Wednesday that he would support the lowering of the abortion limit by “as many weeks as possible”.
He said: “There are 185,000 abortions carried out each year, I think that is a deep sadness”.
‘Great wrong’
In Great Britain, it is currently legal to abort children up to 24 weeks, or up to birth if it is believed that the baby will be born with a disability.
Rees-Mogg has previously been described as having extreme views on abortion as he has said he disagrees with it in all circumstances, including rape.
On 5 Live, he said that rape is a “great wrong”, before suggesting that abortion following rape would not make things any better.
Complete decriminalisation
Meanwhile, speaking to the Guardian, Ann Furedi, Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, claimed that the current abortion law does not work, and that it needed to be replaced.
She said abortion activists thought, “if we had an abortion law that actually worked, what would it be? It was completely obvious that the thing that everybody wanted was no abortion law.
“The best abortion law would be a blank sheet of paper.”
She echoed comments made by Professor Lesley Regan, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who said that abortion should be treated like any other medical procedure and be completely decriminalised.
Shameful anniversary
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Abortion Act 1967. Since then, it has been legal in England, Scotland and Wales to kill an unborn child in the womb.
The Christian Institute’s Social Policy Analyst Dr Sharon James reflected on Britain’s shameful anniversary in an article for the Evangelical Times, which can be read here.
