Press Releases
BPAS responds to draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill
Published 17 May 2007
BPAS responds to draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill
Ann Furedi, the Chief Executive of the sexual healthcare and abortion provider charity BPAS (the British Pregnancy Advisory Service) said today in response to reports that UK law on abortion may be amendable during the debates on the Human Tissue and Embryos (draft) Bill:
‘Without a doubt, abortion law in the UK urgently needs re-examining and updating. It’s not ideal to have the serious changes needed just tacked on to Parliamentary debates about embryo research and IVF, as all these areas require detailed consideration.
‘If abortion law is up for amendment, we will look forward to working with MPs and Peers to bring abortion law into line with women’s needs and expectations- and modern medical practice.
‘For many people it’s a scandal that for example, in this day and age, because Northern Ireland is excluded from the 1967 UK Abortion Act, the vast majority of women there still can’t access a funded abortion from their local health service. Thousands of Northern Irish women must travel outside the country for an abortion, or face becoming mothers against their will. Legal anomalies such as this cause measurable difficulty and distress.
‘The law should also start to recognise that the decision about the future of her pregnancy should rest with the woman. Women must be trusted to make these responsible, complex decisions. Given thatsomeone has to make a decision about whether an unwanted pregnancy should be ended or continued, it is surely right that the person most affected by the decision should decide- the pregnant woman, who will live with the consequences of that decision for the rest of her life.’
ENDS
NOTES
For more information or to request an interview, please contact Laura Riley in the BPAS press office on 020 7612 0206 or 07788 725 185. See the draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill and accompanying material on theDepartment of Health Website:
BPAS is the UK's leading sexual healthcare charity and a specialist provider of abortion care. All the charity's services are provided on a not-for-profit basis. BPAS carried out around 50,000 terminations of pregnancy last year. 86 per cent of all treatments carried out by BPAS were on behalf of the NHS, and so were free of charge to the client.
The UK’s 1967 Abortion Act as amended by the 1990 Human Fertillisation and Embryology Act, requires that two doctors must agree that the risk to a woman’s physical or mental health, or the risk to her children’s physical or mental health will be greater, if she continues with the pregnancy than if she ends it. This applies up until 24 weeks’ gestation. In the case of severe fetal abnormality there is no upper time limit, although a comparatively small number of these treatments take place after 24 weeks’ gestation in the UK. The 1967 Abortion Act as amended does not apply in Northern Ireland.