Pro-life peers attempt to derail bill which allows late abortions for babies with minor defects

The first Parliamentary battle over abortion laws for almost 20 years broke out last night as pro-life campaigners sought to block terminations for babies with minor disabilities.

Peers launched an attempt to change the law to prevent terminations right up to birth if an unborn child is thought to have a range of conditions.

The vote is the first in Parliament on abortion since 1990, when the time limit was reduced from 28 to 24 weeks.

It is the opening salvo in weeks of controversy over the issue.

In the Commons, MPs plan to mount a concerted attempt at a broader lowering of the legal time limit for all abortions to 20 weeks.

Using the Government's new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill as a vehicle for a change in the law, they will also try to introduce a week-long period of "informed consent", during which women would be advised to reflect on a request for an abortion.

Pressure has mounted on the Government to review the law amid concern at a rise in the number of terminations. Last year there were 194,000 in England and Wales, up from 176,000 in 2002.

Calls for reform have been driven by new types of ultrasound scans showing 12-week-old foetuses "walking" and "dancing" in the womb.

Church of England, Roman Catholic, Jewish and Muslim leaders have all demanded a review.

Last night peers were considering an amendment to the law, which currently allows terminations as late as 39 weeks if the unborn child is thought to have a "serious disability".

However, there is no definition of "serious - leading to terminations for having a club foot or a cleft palate.

In one region, the South West, 117 babies with club feet, cleft palates, or webbed or extra fingers and toes were aborted between 2002 and 2005.

Across the country, more than 400 pregnancies a year are terminated because of Down's syndrome.

The Government has asked the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to set better guidance.

But cross-bench peer Baroness Masham, who is leading the attempt to change the law, said: "Handicapped babies are still being aborted right up to full term, which is just horrific.

"I can think of no greater affront to equal opportunities for those who are disabled than the denial of the right to life itself.

"A paediatric plastic surgeon told me that he needed about 29 babies with hare lip defects each year to keep his hand in practice so that he was expert at his job.

"He is not getting them as he used to because so many are being aborted.

"When I related this to my secretary, who had been born with such a defect which had been corrected, she was horrified.

"Modern medicine can alleviate these conditions with relative ease. Many of these conditions are not serious. The law is being abused, even in its own terms."

But the Antenatal Results and Choices charity said it was unthinkable that parents should be forced to have a disabled child when they felt they could not cope.

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, a former nurse, will spearhead moves for a wider change in the law in the Commons next month.

She said: "We have the highest rate of abortions apart from the Ukraine - 200,000 a year.

"It's time to bring that number down, not to increase it - which would be the effect of lots of the measures the Government wants to bring in.

"I hope MPs will accept the need to bring the limit down from 24 to 20 weeks and to introduce a period of informed consent.

"A lot of women say afterwards that they have been coerced into an abortion by a partner, parents or friends."

There is also fierce controversy over the Government's plans to end the 18-year-old rule that fertility doctors must consider a child's need for a father.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will allow more lesbian couples and single women to get fertility treatment on the NHS.

Ministers want to substitute the need for a "father" with the term "supportive parenting".

The Bill will also allow the creation of "hybrid" and "chimera" embryos - human embryos containing animal DNA - for research purposes; permit gay couples who conceive through donated sperm, eggs or embryos to register as parents on the birth certificate; and ban the selection of the sex of a child for non-medical reasons.

Pro-choice MPs, led by the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, are thought to be preparing a list of alternative amendments relaxing the abortion laws.