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Nurses should be allowed to run abortion services up to nine weeks, charity says

BMJ 2006; 333 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.39048.615440.DB (Published 30 November 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;333:1139
  1. Michael Day
  1. 1London

The law requiring women to get the consent of two doctors before they can have an abortion is “archaic” and should be dispensed with, according to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.

In addition, nurses should be allowed to run medical abortion services for terminations up to nine weeks, and the legal limit for abortion should remain at 24 weeks despite pressure for it to be reduced.

The service's chief executive, Ann Furedi, made the claims while announcing the results of a MORI poll of 2000 people, which showed that a clear majority of the public still backed legal abortion. The proportion had fallen from 64% to …

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