The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, currently before Parliament, opens the 1967 Abortion Act up for amendment. The upper limit for socalled 'social abortion' was initially 28 weeks but was lowered to 24 weeks by the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. This change reflected improvements in neonatal care. More...
As a general surgical registrar I was once helping my consultant remove a giant spleen when the patient began 'hosing' from an invisible source. After a frenzy of clamping, cutting and ligating, things stabilised and we were able to proceed at a more leisurely pace. 'It's good to see the...
'40 years. 6.7 million abortions. Timefor change!' [1] This strap line brings together churches, professional bodies and pro-life organisations to mark on Saturday 27 October the 40th anniversaryof the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act. 6.7 million abortions. The numbers are staggering: more than the number of Jews who died...
The Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, expected to be introduced into Parliament after the Queen's Speech this November, will open up the entire 1967 Abortion Act to amendment. Pro-choice MPs have pledged to liberalise the law [1] and intend to mark the Act's 40th anniversary on 27 October with a...
In 2003 we considered abortion in CMF File 23, but we concentrate here on the consequences of abortion. It is timely to review these. First, the total number of abortions in the UK continues to rise, reaching the highest level ever in 2006 at 201,173 in England and Wales...
On 25 March 1807, two hundred years ago, the British Parliament finally voted to make slave trading illegal throughout the Empire. The film Amazing Grace graphically recounts how a disparate group of campaigners, led by William Wilberforce, caused an entire nation to confront its guilt and to act. The title...
Over the last ten years the British pro-euthanasia lobby has very effectively used high-profile 'hard cases' of motor neurone disease to champion its cause: Annie Lindsell, Reginald Crew, John Close and, most famously, Diane Pretty. She sought her husband's assistance in her suicide, and in 2002 took her case to...
Doctors are under great pressure. Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) will see 34,000 junior doctors applying for just 18,500 training posts, with many facing unemployment or migration. Changes in immigration laws have already seen tens of thousands of overseas doctors who have been uprooted from specialist training schemes having to return...
Since 1967, more than six million abortions have been performed in Britain, over 95 percent on the grounds that abortion safeguards the mental health of women with unplanned pregnancies. In a letter to the Times, [1] coinciding with the 39th anniversary of the Abortion Act on 27 October 2006, fifteen...
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics [1] published its long awaited report Critical care decisions in fetal and neonatal medicine: ethical issues on 16 November 2006.[2,3,4] In the weeks leading up to its release there was considerable media speculation about its contents with major newspapers highlighting what individual bodies had said...