{"id":308488,"date":"2024-03-12T16:54:59","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T21:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=308488"},"modified":"2024-03-12T09:44:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T14:44:45","slug":"hundreds-medical-professionals-decrease-abortion-time-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/hundreds-medical-professionals-decrease-abortion-time-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds of medical professionals want to decrease UK’s upper abortion time limit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A group of Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom are looking to reduce the country’s abortion limit to 22 weeks, and that effort is being applauded by a group of over 700 medical professionals.<\/p>\n

Caroline Ansell is leading a group<\/a> of over 30 MPs to have the country’s current abortion law amended. In an op-ed written for the Telegraph<\/a>, she noted that the rate of survival for premature babies born at 23 weeks has doubled, and medical guidance has changed to encourage doctors to intervene for micropreemies born at 22 weeks. “This is news to be celebrated, itself a feat of medical progress that has transformed countless lives,” she said. “And yet, it leaves a contradiction in how we in the UK regard babies at this gestation. Unlike our closest European neighbours, the UK\u2019s upper time limit for abortion of 24 weeks remains beyond the gestational age at which many babies now survive.”<\/p>\n

She further pointed out that even within the same hospital, a baby could meet one of two drastically different fates.<\/p>\n

“[A] study estimated that in 2020 and 2021, 261 babies born at 22 or 23 weeks gestation survived to be discharged from hospital,” she wrote, and added, “And yet in 2021, the most recent year for which we have full records, 755 abortions of babies at 22 or 23 weeks gestation were performed under ground C of the statutory grounds under which abortions are permitted, for which there is currently a 24-week time limit.”<\/p>\n