Introduction

Access to safe abortion has been labelled as a fundamental human right by the International Women's Health Coalition, who stated that:

• A woman should have the choice to carry a pregnancy to term or not;

• Abortion services should be part of a comprehensive sexual health programme;

• Lack of funding and illegality do not reduce the number of abortions, they only serve to put the woman's health in danger.1

Despite this, abortion is illegal or difficult to access in many countries and has recently come under renewed attack in the Western world.

In the USA, certain states have introduced laws requiring women to listen to fetal heart beat monitors or to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound scan before being permitted to proceed with an abortion, with the thinly-veiled intent to discourage them.

Recently in the UK, MP Nadine Dorries proposed an amendment to abortion legislation that would have prevented abortion providers, such as Marie Stopes International and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, from offering pre-abortion counselling to women on the basis that their advice was ‘not independent’. They would instead be directed to ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’ for supposedly independent counselling. However, many of these centres are run and funded by religious groups with prominent anti-abortion agendas.2

The amendment was withdrawn due both to lack of support and to a national campaign against it. But the motives behind the amendment, and the more extreme pieces of legislation being passed in the USA, call for the arguments of legality, morality and access to be re-evaluated.