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Europe and North America

Forty years on, abortion battle rages in Britain

April 24, 2008
Kate Kelland, Reuters

Pro-choice campaigners mark 40 years of legal abortion in Britain next week, but say their hard-won right is under pressure from pro-life activists trying to lower the 24-week limit for the termination of pregnancy.

Passionate debate over the ethics of aborting healthy babies preceded the Abortion Act that came into force in Britain in April 1968, and the issue is still hotly contested by the two sides.

“I used to -- and still occasionally do -- get lunatic letters comparing me to Herod and Hitler,” David Steel, the parliamentarian who introduced the Act, told Reuters.

Forty years after Steel saw the Act become law, Britain’s parliament is again besieged by activists -- one group determined to stop what it sees as the barbaric murder of innocents, the other fiercely defending what it says is women’s right to manage their own lives.

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