I had an abortion at 24 weeks – cutting the time limit will lead to more terminations, not less

MORE than 700 doctors are calling to have the time limit for terminations reduced from 24 to 22 weeks.

The proposed change will be debated in Parliament in the coming weeks and has cross-party support.

Today, a writer and an MP give Alex Lloyd their views for and against the controversial move.

HILARY, 52, from London, had a late-term abortion, making her wary of restricting access.

She says: I was just over 22 weeks pregnant, in 2012, when test results showed that the baby I was carrying had an extremely rare and serious chromosome disorder.

I desperately wanted my daughter, but doctors told me she would be unlikely to be born alive and, if she were, she would suffer for the rest of her short life.

It would, everyone agreed, be better for me to terminate my pregnancy.

That’s why, when I heard of the proposals to reduce the abortion deadline by two weeks, to 22 weeks, I was horrified.

I do not believe this is in the interests of either babies or women.

The only people it benefits are the so-called pro-lifers, who really want to do away with abortion rights altogether.

Pain and trauma

The rationale behind this proposal is that medical advances mean more extremely premature babies are now surviving.

But UK research published last year found only 261 babies out of 1,001 born alive at 22 and 23 weeks survived to discharge from hospital in 2020 and 2021.

The majority of these babies still die.

And being viable – surviving – means just that. It doesn’t mean having a healthy or happy life.

Babies born at 22 weeks only survive at all because they are kept alive by machines, artificial feeding and a team of specialist nurses and doctors.

They spend four months – or more – in hospital with round-the-clock-care.

A very high percentage of those babies who survive to leave hospital will be left with lasting impairments – the earlier they are born, the more severe.

According to the charity Tommy’s, one in ten premature babies will have a permanent disability such as lung disease, cerebral palsy, blindness or deafness. And one in two will have some sort of disability.

Lowering the abortion time limit won’t lead to fewer abortions. It will, many experts believe, lead to more.

Women panicked

Women who, like me, don’t discover what is wrong with their baby until late in pregnancy will be forced by the earlier legal deadline to make a choice to abort before they have the full facts.

Women may be panicked into making decisions as they worry it will not be signed off by doctors once the 22 weeks have passed.

Jonathan Lord, medical director of MSI Reproductive Choices, has said that when expectant parents get bad news at the 18-20 week scan, they rightly want diagnostic tests and these can take time.

I agree with him when he says: “Reducing the limit to when these tests aren’t ready will pressurise this group into having to consider an abortion whilst they can, rather than wait for any reassurance that the test may indicate.”

Had I known that my daughter Elodie’s condition was so serious and life-limiting early on, I would, of course, have ended my pregnancy sooner. It would have saved so much pain and trauma for everyone.

But it took months of blood tests and invasive procedures and scans to reveal what was wrong with her. And with every single one, I prayed that everything would be OK, that the doctors were wrong and I would have a healthy baby.

Lowering the abortion time limit won’t lead to fewer abortions. It will, many experts believe, lead to more

In the end, I chose to have a termination in order to spare her suffering. By the time it could be arranged, I was in my 24th week of pregnancy.

It was an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy – first a procedure to stop my baby’s heart, then, two days later, an induction, followed by hours of labour and, finally, a stillbirth.

When I close my eyes, I can still see her little face, so like my other daughter’s – and her tiny hands and feet. No woman would put herself through this without very good reason.

That’s why so few late abortions take place in the UK. In 2021, 89 per cent were at under ten weeks, one per cent past 20 weeks. At over 24 weeks, today’s limit, there were only 276 abortions.

Late termination is never a lifestyle choice – it’s often a life-saving choice. Women who have late terminations do so because of foetal abnormality, danger to their own lives or because they are extremely vulnerable.

They may have been raped, have severe mental health problems, be in a violent relationship or have been made suddenly homeless.

Not a lifestyle choice

Others don’t even find out they’re pregnant until late on.

Stopping these women from aborting, forcing them to carry a baby to term and give birth against their will, is pure cruelty. What they need is compassion, not the fear of prosecution.

Changing the legal limit will also mean doctors will have no choice but to resuscitate all babies born at 22 weeks, even if they know they have no hope of survival and will suffer. If they don’t, they also face prosecution.

The abortion limit doesn’t need to change. We shouldn’t be focusing on how early babies can become viable, but on women and our rights over our own bodies.

'LAWS MUST BE ETHICAL FOR MODERN ERA'

CAROLINE ANSELL, 53, MP for Eastbourne, has tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to reduce the abortion time limit from 24 to 22 weeks.

She says: Two of my youngest constituents celebrated an important milestone recently.

Twins Rocco and Franco, from Eastbourne, turned two years old, having been born extremely prematurely at 23 weeks and six days’ gestation.

Not so long ago, their early birth would have meant their chances of living were slim.

But thanks to medical advances, the survival rate of babies born at 23 weeks doubled in the decade to 2019, from two in ten to four in ten.

This prompted new guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine (BAPM), enabling doctors to intervene to save premature babies from 22 weeks’ gestation, where previously they would have been discouraged prior to 24 weeks.

In 2020 and 2021, 261 babies born alive at 22 and 23 weeks survived to be discharged from hospital, according to research by Leicester University and Imperial College.

The UK’s upper limit of 24 weeks for abortion, apart from in restricted circumstances, is now beyond the gestational age at which many children survive.

It’s also much later than many of our neighbours, with an average among EU countries of 12 weeks. Doctors backing the change tell me how hospitals could have one team of medics working to save the life of a baby while a second team is ending another – yet both are the same gestational age.

The NHS website states that at 12 weeks, the unborn baby is “fully formed”, and by 22 weeks, they enter a pattern of sleeping and waking.

But in 2021, 755 abortions at 22 or 23 weeks were performed under ground C of the seven permitted grounds for termination in the Abortion Act 1967.

This is risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman, which has the 24-week limit, along with ground D, covering risk to existing children.

All grounds without this time limit are for medical reasons and will be unaffected by the change.

The public is not in favour of abortion in any circumstances, with a ComRes poll finding that 60 per cent wanted the time limit to be reduced to 20 weeks or below.

This amendment does not even go that far and would not apply to cases where the mother’s life is at risk or there is a foetal abnormality.

Revisiting our laws to account for progress is long overdue.

It isn’t a pro-life versus pro-choice argument, but making laws and ethical decisions fit for modern times.