Minister attacks Tory abortion motives

The public health minister has accused Conservative MPs of manipulating a vote on abortion in order to reduce women's rights.

Ahead of the first Commons vote on the matter since 1990, Dawn Primarolo said that some Tories are seeking to withdraw access to termination by gradually reducing the time limit for which they are available.

Mid-Bedfordshire MP and former nurse Nadine Dorries has tabled amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill being debated in the House this week seeking to reduce the limit to as low as 16 weeks from the current 24-week maximum.

She argues that medical advances mean that foetuses now have a much greater chance of survival independent of the mother at that stage, the main barometer by which the time limit is judged.

However Primarolo told the Sunday Telegraph that: "If they are being honest, they are saying they don't like abortion.

"They want to prevent it entirely and they see that gradually changing the time limit down is the way to do it, because there isn't support to completely change the [19]67 Act.

"This Bill is so important and, frankly, it's been hijacked and it's not right."

The minister later told the BBC that she would support the "status quo" and claimed there was no new medical evidence that the limit should be cut.

However Dorries insisted that Labour MPs had wanted to use the Bill to liberalise abortion law further, but that they had not won the argument.

"They don't like it because it has not gone their way," she said.

"I'm an advocate of fast, safe, free access to abortion, especially in the first trimester. My only problem is with late abortion."