Doctors vote to give women quicker access to early abortions

Medics attending the British Medical Association (BMA) conference voted by 67 per cent to 33 per cent in favour of removing the need for two doctors' signatures to allow an abortion in the first trimester.

The move would effectively remove the need for women to meet medical criteria that continuing with the pregnancy poses a risk to their medical or physical health. It means that abortion in the first three months of pregnancy would be as easy to obtain as other treatments.

Ethics chiefs had earlier told the British Medical Association conference that the rules governing abortions carried out up to 14 weeks into pregnancy should be liberalised to make the procedure safer for patients.

Women who are less than nine weeks pregnant can be prescribed two tablets that induce a miscarriage, but the conference heard that delays in the system often force women to wait six weeks or more, meaning they have to undergo a surgical abortion that carries greater risks.

Tony Calland, chairman of the BMA's medical ethics committee, said: "There is a natural delay in the process even in areas where the system works well.

"It is not unusual for women to be 14 or 15 weeks pregnant before they have a termination, even if they came to the doctor at six weeks. That means they have to have a surgical termination and the delay is adding risk.

"Under a new system it could be very quick."

Last year the number of abortions carried out in England rose above 200,000 for the first time, with 68 per cent performed earlier-than 10 weeks and 30 per cent carried out using the pill method.

Dr Calland said that with proper training there was no reason why nurses and midwives could not hand out the tablets.

He said many parts of the 40-year-old Abortion Act needed updating because of medical advances and changes in social attitude - abortion is the only procedure where the patient must have consent from more than one healthcare professional.

He called this "an anomaly", especially as women can give consent for far more risky procedures and are even allowed to refuse a Caesarean delivery when their unborn child's life is in danger. The changes being called for today relate only to first trimester pregnancies and there are no proposals to alter rules governing terminations carried out later.

Anti-abortion campaigners attacked Dr Calland's suggestion. Julia Millington, political director of the ProLife Alliance, said: "The proposal to allow nurses to carry out first trimester abortions is outrageous. Why should nurses be made to do the dirty work?

"With only one per cent of all abortions performed because of a serious risk to the life or health of the pregnant woman ... we have abortion on demand in the UK. Liberalisation of the law is the last thing we need."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "It is accepted Parliamentary practice that proposals for changes in the law on abortion have come from backbench members and that decisions are made on the basis of free votes.

"The Government has no plans to change the law on abortion."