Royal College votes to back ‘abortion on demand’

One of the country’s top medical colleges voted yesterday to back ‘abortion on demand’.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, representing more than 6,000 doctors, backed supporting the removal of abortion from criminal law.

This was despite a protest letter signed by more than 650 doctors, who warned the move would severely damage their profession’s reputation and said the vote, in which only 33 members of the college’s council could take part, would not reflect their views.

The Royal College will now lobby the Government to change the law so abortions are subject to the same rules as any other medical procedure. The vote reflects a major shift in opinion among doctors and other health workers.

The British Medical Association voted to back decriminalisation at its annual conference in June and the Royal College of Midwives came out in support last May, without consulting members beforehand.

Professor Lesley Regan, chairman of the Royal College, said she was ‘standing up for the rights’ of women. She stressed that decriminalising abortion would not result in the procedure becoming any less safe or less tightly regulated. But women would need only one doctor’s signature rather than the current two.

Clara Campbell, spokesman for the charity Life, said the Government would now come under pressure to ‘open the floodgates to abortion on demand’.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, representing more than 6,000 doctors, backed supporting the removal of abortion from criminal law