Charity calls for more lenient abortion laws, UK

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 26 Nov 2004 - 11:00 PDT

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The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) is calling for UK women to have easier access to abortions after 20 weeks.

According to the Guardian, the BPAS argues that there is a shortage of provision for those women who do not discover they are pregnant until near the legal limit of 24 weeks, despite strong Government funding into providing early abortion services within the NHS.

"We're going to argue that there are very good reasons why women require abortions up to the legal time limit," said Ann Furedi, head of the charity.

"The real scandal of late abortions is that women well within the legal time limit cannot access services because there are too few providers."

Less than 3,000 abortions out of 20,000 are carried out after 20 weeks. A late termination is often requested because the woman may have been unable to make a decision sooner or, in the case of teenager girls, because they have delayed telling anyone.

The BPAS claims they are forced to turn away around 100 women a year because they cannot provide a termination within the legal time frame.

For more information visit: http://www.bpas.org
http://www.hda-online.org.uk

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