The British Medical Association’s membership has voted to make the decriminalisation of abortion official policy. Delegates at the meeting voted by a two thirds majority to call for a change in the law to effectively decriminalise abortion on demand, for any reason, up to 28 weeks. Opponents of the change said it could “open the floodgates” to sex-selective terminations, as well as putting women in abusive relationships at risk of coercion to end their pregnancies.

One opposing speaker placed the debate firmly in the context of the wider political campaign to remove every last vestige of restrictions on abortion. “This motion is . . . coming from a very small minority of extreme campaigners. Please RB [representative body], don’t make the BMA the unwitting stooge of these extremists.”

Commenting on the news, Dr. Anthony McCarthy of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said: “The BMA has betrayed all who take seriously healthcare for pregnant woman in favor of an extremist agenda in line with the abortion industry’s laissez faire ‘up to birth’ attitude to ending the lives of unborn children. Against overwhelming public opinion and against those who support women by refusing to trivialise abortion, the BMA has today undermined the consciences of doctors who refuse to follow an ‘autonomy’ agenda that has nothing to do with good medicine and everything to do with ideology.”