I may be pro-choice but we must have limits

I am the latter, which means I must march against threats to reduce the time limit of 24 weeks, hold placards calling for "abortion on demand" and shout that it is a woman's right to choose. Or, to paraphrase an Irish friend, tell the Catholic church to "get your rosaries off my ovaries".

I have done all of the above years ago, as a student and feminist campaigner, and I still broadly believe it is a woman's right to choose. But this week new statistics stopped me in my tracks. The numbers are small but when I read that more than 100 women in one part of England aborted otherwise healthy foetuses because they had reversible defects such as club foot and cleft palate I was taken aback.

Why? Because last year a good friend found her unborn child had club feet - or talipes, as it is now known. The condition was detected during a sophisticated scan she had opted for to bypass the miscarriage risk of amniocentesis testing.

Her response to the news was to research treatment for talipes, so that when her son was born she was already in touch with the best specialist she could find.

The first few months were tough, involving fortnightly trips to hospital and the wrench of seeing her baby in plaster casts, but it was easier because she was prepared. The commitment to her baby's health has been considerable - she took a year off work instead of her planned six months. But now her boy is a happy, clever thing with feet that function like any other toddler's.

Like David Steel - architect of the crucial 1967 Abortion Act - I firmly believe you shouldn't reduce time limits. Another friend had a late - and traumatic - termination after discovering her child was too deformed to survive outside the womb. And while it's not pleasant, I think there is an argument for early abortion on lifestyle grounds. This is the type that makes up most of the 186,000 abortions carried out in the UK annually.

There is also a case for greater personal and moral responsibility, both from parents and GPs. I find it hard to believe the two requisite doctors happily sign consent forms to abort babies with hare lips when they know a relatively easy solution exists. Rather, I imagine they are resigned to doing so. I am loathe to write a childbearing rulebook for other women but there is a difference between deciding whether to have a severely disabled child whose quality of life would be negligible and being squeamish about having an imperfect baby. That's the worst sort of lifestyle choice.