The Financial Times reported that a significant number of Conservative Party candidates in winnable seats hold strong anti-abortion views. The newspaper says that the candidates will raise the prospect of a fresh drive to cut the time limit from 24 to 20 weeks should David Cameron win this year’s general election.
Party officials believe that if all those required to secure a majority at the next election win their seats, the result would create a bloc of votes big enough to tighten the existing legislation, aided by votes from some anti-abortion Northern Irish, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs.
In 2008, Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, had launched a campaign to lower the abortion restrictions to a 20-week limit. The campaign has been backed by 200 MPs, who were angered at the rising abortion rates – 200,000 a year in Britain.
Ms Dorries, 52, watched an abortion at 19 weeks in a North London hospital.
‘A baby aborted at 19 weeks is given a lethal injection into the heart. It is the most scary and unbelievably horrible thing to experience. This is Death Row.
‘The needle goes into the heart and then the baby is left for 48 hours. The foetal monitor is checked until the heart stops,’ she said.
Ms Dorries assembled all the medical and scientific evidence to make her case for a reduction in the time limit, and then asked David Cameron to back her.
Recent studies consistently found that 60 per cent of infants born at 23 weeks initially survive on the labour ward. The figures have often reignited the debate about lowering the 24-week abortion limit.
Millie McDonagh, who was fighting for her life after being born at 22 weeks, was given a one per cent chance of survival. She weighed just 20oz and measured less than 11 inches. In 2010 she is celebrating her fourth birthday.
A number of medical professionals advocated the time limit for abortion set at 17 weeks – a level that would still be considerably higher than France, Germany or Italy, where the cut-off point is 12 weeks.