The 40th anniversary in October this year of the passing of the UK Abortion Act is certain to be marked by attempts to reopen the debate about lowering the upper limit for legal terminations. The anti-choice campaigners, quick to point out the uncomfortable resonance of the tally of six million “deaths” since 1967,1 have already given notice of their optimistic ambition to halve the number of abortions, while in the House of Commons a Conservative MP is promoting a bill that would help them hit their more realistic target of lowering the upper limit from 24 weeks.

The pro-choice lobby has also come out fighting, denying the charge that abortion in the UK is, to all intents and purposes, available on demand—but suggesting that it ought to be. In an Ipsos MORI poll carried out in November for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the UK's leading independent provider of abortions, 59% agreed that “abortion should be made legally available for all who want it.” In a pre-emptive strike Ann Furedi, the organisation's chief executive, called for an end to the “archaic” requirement for the approval of two doctors and proposed that abortions under nine weeks' gestation should be carried out by nurses.