Abortion

The British Humanist Association’s position in regard to abortion is “pro-choice”. We believe that the present law in England and Wales and Scotland is permissive: it does not impose abortion on anyone who does not want one or does not want to perform one.
 
For society as a whole, as well as for the children themselves, it is better if every child is a wanted child. However, abortion is not the best way of avoiding unwanted children, and improved sex education, easily available contraception, and better education and opportunities for young women, can all help to reduce the number of abortions. But as long as abortion is needed as a last resort, most humanists would agree that society should provide safe legal facilities. The alternatives, which would inevitably include illegal abortions, are far worse.

Please read A Humanist Discussion of Abortion for more information.

What’s the situation?

Fewer than 2% of abortions are performed after 20 weeks and, contrary to anti-choice hype, research shows there has been no increase in survival rates for babies born before 24 weeks gestation. We oppose any changes to the law which seek to restrict access to abortion, such as imposing compulsory ‘counselling’ or introduce further obstacles to later abortion, or outlaw abortion on the basis of doctrine rather than on evidence.

During the passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in 2008, a number of amendments to the law on abortion were introduced. Amendments which sought to reduce the number of weeks that a woman could access abortion were defeated. A number of other amendments, both liberalising and restrictive, were made in Autumn of 2008. However, these were not in the end debated and no changes were made to abortion law.

See our briefing on those amendments for more information.

One of the amendments that was not debated was to extend the Abortion Act to Northern Ireland. Although abortion in England, Wales and Scotland is legal, the law does not extend to Northern Ireland. Abortion in Northern Ireland is unlawful in most circumstances – it is only lawful where there is a real and serious risk to the woman's mental or physical health and the risk is permanent or long-term. Consequently most women from Northern Ireland have to travel to England to obtain a private abortion. Unlike other British women, they are not entitled to an abortion on the NHS. We consider that this is an unequal situation which robs women in Northern Ireland of their fundamental rights to a basic healthcare service, leaving them as second-class citizens within the UK, and which cannot be justified.

What can you do?

We support other pro-choice organisations. For more information about abortion in the UK, please see www.abortionrights.org.uk and www.fpa.org.uk and www.efc.org.uk.

The BHA consults with its members on the subjects of human tissues, embryo research, abortion, fertility, and many other scientific and ethical issues. We welcome your comments on these subjects, which help us to form our policy and campaigns.

You can support the BHA by becoming a member. That helps in itself, and you can help even more by supporting our campaigns in the ways suggested above.  But campaigns also cost money – quite a lot of money – and we also need financial support. You can make a donation to the BHA.