Putting politics in the womb

'We promote absolute respect for all human life from the moment of the one-cell embryo, when a unique human life is created. To deprive an individual of his life on the basis of qualities such as size, location or level of development is to contend that it is these qualities which make us worthy of the right to life. Every human being has an inherent right to life by virtue of being human.

The abortion issue is the most significant human rights issue of our time. Abortion is not a religious issue, although religious leaders are rightly concerned about this violation of human rights. The right to life is the fundamental right from which all others flow. Issues such as health care, housing, education, freedom of speech, the environment, foreign policy, and so on, are of little significance if one's life can be arbitrarily ended by state authority during the prenatal period.

Those who oppose moves to tighten our abortion laws are claiming that abortion should not be a political issue. They did not make such claims when Lord Steel tabled his Private Members Bill which became the Abortion Act 1967. Can they have forgotten that abortion was decriminalised by an Act of Parliament?

If we have genuine concern about loss of life, then abortion must be seen as the greatest war against human life the world has ever seen. The numbers of unborn children who have been destroyed under the Abortion Act of 1967 in the UK alone has gone past the six million mark, and the figures from countries such as China are so huge as to be almost unimaginable. An estimate of the international total since abortion has been recorded (post-war) stands at over 900 million. Nothing in the history of man's hatred of his brother can in any way approach the horror of these figures. And the abortion death toll mounts every day.

If we can only begin by saving some lives, then at the very least we must do that and it is on that basis that we support calls for a reduction in the upper time limit. Our opponents contend that "only" 1.6 per cent of abortions are performed after 20 weeks, but what may appear a very small percentage actually represents the extermination of almost 3,000 lives every year.

We also intend to draw attention to the overall eugenic nature of abortion for disability as part of our campaign, highlighting the discriminatory nature of allowing abortion up to the moment of birth when the baby has an impairment. That is why we initiated the cleft-palate legal challenge which Joanna Jepson fronted in the High Court. Our aim was to draw attention to the utterly callous nature of abortion, where no disability is too minor and no stage in pregnancy too late to deter the abortionists from killing the unborn child.

It is not that we believe that abortion for disability is worse than any other kind of abortion, but that we believe we should, at the very least, begin to save the lives of those disabled babies who are sacrificed post-24 weeks under the current legislation.

The other strand of our strategy is to bring down the upper limit for abortion, again not because we think that aborting a baby late in pregnancy is worse than earlier on. We reiterate our opposition to all abortions without exception, but in the meantime seek to save as many lives as possible. When adults were running from the recent massacre at Beslan they realised they could not save every helpless child, but they still saved those they could.

The nation is sensitive to the humanity of the unborn child and there are expressions of support for a reduction in the upper time limit. However, logic dictates that if some abortions are wrong, then all abortion is wrong. How can it be acceptable to end the life of a foetal child at 16 or 18 weeks if it is wrong to end that same life at 20 weeks?

We will try to save as many unborn babies as we can, and one day in the future it will be the joy of other generations to celebrate the total abolition of abortion."

Jill Radford is professor of women's studies and criminology at Teesside University

'I firmly believe that abortion should be there very much as a last resort choice for women, but the reality is that there are seriously fewer later abortions - almost 90 per cent of abortions take place in the first 12 weeks.

No woman takes the decision to have an abortion lightly. But when you get into the upper limit you really are getting into the terrain of serious medical health issues, those which are going to be born with severe disabilities where their quality of life is going to be drastically reduced or women with learning difficulties who may not have even realised what has happened to them until later.

The controls do exist about late abortions, the medical influence is a strong one. Having a late abortion is a very different procedure to what a woman would go through in an early termination and it's not anything a woman would undergo lightly, having to go through a form of labour. There is also a higher risk of complications.

I think the back street abortionists have had their day, but if the abortion limit was reduced to 20 weeks, what would stop women getting on a plane to have it done in another country? There are clinics abroad where abortions can be carried out post-24 weeks.

Currently, about 10,000 women come from other parts of the world, where abortion is not legal or it is difficult to obtain, to have their abortions here, and in countries where abortion is illegal, thousands of women die every year through unsafe terminations.

But what I do find disconcerting is the extent to which people will go to promote this moralistic, anti-women fundamentalist agenda. I don't think it is at all about late abortions. The men of the church, in particular, are trying to make politics out of women's distress and it is so unsavoury. Michael Howard is using late abortions as a way to gain more votes, when, if he looked at the figures, he would see that less than one per cent of abortions are carried out after 22 weeks.

In relation to pregnancy in the United States, women are being put into prisons or compulsory clinics if they're not seen to be doing everything just right in their pregnancy. I wouldn't think it's right to smoke or drink alcohol but in the States they can face imprisonment for it. George Bush has already made his right-wing, anti-abortion views clear. His attempts will severely restrict women's reproductive freedom. Changing the abortion limit is the tip of a very disturbing iceberg.

I don't know of any hospitals or doctors who do late abortions on demand. Even if a woman has been raped, she is not automatically entitled to an abortion. She has to convince two doctors that continuing with the pregnancy would have a worse effect on her mental or physical health, or on that of her existing children, than having a termination.

It is hard to know what is going on in the minds of the younger generation but I work with students and when I talk to them about these issues they take them very seriously. They all have mixed views but you can tell they do not see abortion as an easy option, it really is a last resort.

A woman's right to choose fertility control and whether to have a baby should be fundamental and abortion is a necessary last resort for when things go wrong. At the end of the day, it is our bodies. Changing the legal limit would only take away our right to choose."