Blair responds to abortion unease

Continued from Page One: Julia Millington of Alive and Kicking, a group campaigning to lower the upper time limit, said that the intervention of the two cardinals was "inspiring".
"We hope that other religious leaders will follow suit," she said. "Recent opinion polls reveal that the nation is increasingly concerned about the scale of the abortion tragedy and supports a full Parliamentary inquiry."
She said: "It is very encouraging that the Prime Minister recognises the need to reopen the abortion debate given that in 1990 he voted for abortion up to birth. Presumably he now thinks that abortions are being carried out too late."
She added: "We support calls for a review of the law. It is long overdue. It is time the law was looked at. There are many things that need to be revisited, such as the risk to women's health and the way the abortion law is applied in this country."
Mr Dobbin , the chairman of the Alt-Party Parliamentary Pro-life thoup, also agreed that the time had come for the abortion law to be reviewed. 'There is a momentum in Parliament in favour of a review and there is an increasing view among the public that this should be the case," he said. "1 think the
Prime Minister was reflecting the shift in public opinion."
In spite of increased use of the morning-after pill there are more than 180,000 abortions annually in Britain, a figure which has increased under the Labour Government. They cost the taxpayer a total of £75 million each year.
Mrs Hewitt told Sky News in January that she did not "want to see the legal maximum changed", saying the Government believed the matter should be "left to backbench members of Parliament in Private Members' Bills".
But recent opinion polls have revealed considerable public unease over the rising figures. Only last week the latest revealed that eight out of 10 women believed abortions at 24 weeks were cruel.
Mr Blair's apparent willingness to revisit the Abortion Act may mark the start of a new relationship between the Prime Minister and the Catholic Church in Britain.
His voting record on abortion had previously led to public clashes with Cardinal Thomas Winning, the Archbishop of Glasgow who died in 2001 and who had said that Mr Blair was guilty of "an inconsistency which belies a certain brand or a claim to Christian values that to me is a sham". He had also criticised Labour for supporting abortion and stifling debate on the issue. 'The embers of totalitarianism are not far from the surface of New Labour," he wrote.
It emerged last year that the cardinal's attacks on the Government had often left Mr Blair fuming. According to the diaries of Lance Price, a former Downing Street spin doctor, the one thing that made the Prime Minister mad was "f---ing prelates getting involved in politics and pretending it was nothing to do with politics". .
Abortion became a key issue in last year's General Election campaign, however, when Michael Howard, then Tory leader, said he wanted to see the time limit cut to 20 weeks.
David Steel, the architect of the 1967 Act, also said he wants the upper limit reduced to 22 weeks. Mr Cameron backs a new limit of between 20 and 22 weeks.
Ahead of the last election, Cardinal O'Brien issued a statement calling for the end of legal abortion. describing it as an "appalling practice".
He said, however, that as an interim step he would endorse a Conservative proposal to cut the upper limit from 24 to 20 weeks on the basis that a person could make an "imperfect choice" when the intention was
to save lives.
"More than six million abortions have been carried out in the United Kingdom since the passing of the Act," he said.
"They represent a senseless waste of human life and an attack on the vast numbers of humans at their most defenceless," the cardinal added.
Public attitudes have been influenced by such developments as the high definition pictures of a 12-week-old foetus apparently sucking its thumb.
Under the Act abortion is permitted with the permission of two doctors up to the 24th week of pregnancy, the limit at which a foetus is said to be "viable", or able to survive if born, although abortion up to birth is permitted on babies with serious handicaps.
However, medical advances have led to increasing numbers of premature babies surviving beyond the time limit they can be legally aborted.
Last year a study of premature babies at University College Hospital, London, found that 42 per cent of those born at 23 weeks survived, compared with just 10 per cent when the abortion laws were last amended 16 years ago.
Furthermore, about 50 babies a year survive botched abortions each year in Britain, recent figures have revealed.