Abortion—The New Law
| Date | 01 August 1992 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002201839205600309 |
| Author | R J Cooper |
| Published date | 01 August 1992 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ABORTION-THE
NEW
LAW
RJCooper"
Various provisions contained in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Act 1990 have been brought into force on different dates since the Act
received the Royal Assent on 1 November 1990. With minor exceptions,
the Act became fully operative from 1 August 1991. Much of the Act is
concerned with the regulation of activities concerned with reproductive
medicine.
It
sets up a Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
which is responsible for licensing treatment, storage and research and for
providing guidance in the form of a code of practice. Certain practices in
connection with embryos and gametes are regulated, the law relating to
surrogacy is altered in a minorway, and the lawon abortion is reformulated.
It
is with this last matter that this article concerns itself.
Section 37 of the 1990 Act substitutes new provisions into the Abortion
Act 1967 so as to make some alterations to the grounds on which a
pregnancy can be lawfully terminated and to resolve the interrelationship
of the 1967 Act and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929. This aspect
of the Act was brought into force on 1 April 1991 (SI 1991 No 480).
THE
REFORMULATED
GROUNDS
FOR
ABORTION
In its original format, the Abortion Act 1967 set out the grounds on which
apregnancy could be lawfully terminated by a doctor in two limbs: first,
in s 1(1)(a), what Glanville Williams in his Textbook
of
Criminal Law
conveniently refers to as the 'health grounds', that is that continuance of
the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, or of
injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any
existing children of her family, greater than if the pregnancy were
terminated; secondly, in s 1(1)(b), what Glanville Williams calls the 'foetal
ground', namely that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born
it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously
handicapped. Under the pre-existing s1(1)(a), three separate grounds
were, in reality,
discernible-risk
to mother's life, risk to mother's health
and risk to health of existing children. With some modification, the
reformulated s 1(1) separates out these into two distinct
paragraphs-(a)
and
(c}-and
adds a new ground in para (b). Paragraph (it) deals with the
health grounds and now provides as a ground for lawful abortion 'that the
pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that continuance
of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were
•Department of Law, Newcastle Polytechnic.
297
To continue reading
Request your trial