Aborting unborn babies earlier in pregnancy is ‘more respectful’ of prenatal life, a legal expert is due to tell the Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment in expert testimony today. Senior law lecturer in medical law from the University of London, Ruth Fletcher, will tell the committee that the vast majority of abortions by women in the UK occur at less than 13 weeks into gestation. Irish women, however, are accessing abortion later because they must travel. Such abortions are less respectful of unborn life and so, she advises, introducing a UK-style abortion law here would allow women abort their babies at an earlier stage of pregnancy. “For many people, a law which has the effect of helping to make earlier abortion more likely than later abortion, is, in effect, more respectful of prenatal life if it reduces the rate of later abortion.”