BY JULIE CRAWFORD

MANCHESTER, England - During the month of August, anti- abortion forces in the United Kingdom launched an attack on abortion rights. Their stated aim is to restrict the grounds for abortion to purely medical reasons. The attack centered on the case where a woman decided to abort one of her twin fetuses under the social clause of the 1967 Abortion Act, which legalized the right to choose. This case, termed "selective reduction," sparked a virulent assault by rightist forces opposed to abortion and was reported in all mainstream newspapers.

The controversy began when Philip Bennett, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in west London, gave an interview in early August telling the story of one of his patients, a 28-year-old unmarried woman with one child. She asked to have one of the two fetuses aborted and Bennett agreed.

On August 6, the Society of Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) won a High Court injunction to "halt the operation." SPUC campaigners sought to force Bennett to tell his patient that "pro-life" groups had offered up to 60,000 ($90,000) in an attempt to persuade the woman to give birth to both babies. This would establish a precedent for a third party intervening between the doctor and his or her patient.

The daily Independent reported that "SPUC dropped its legal action" when it discovered that the termination had in fact been carried out several months earlier. At the same time, the newspaper also reported that Life, another anti-abortion organization, was trying to launch an inquiry into this case "with a view to stepping up its campaign for clarification on the abortion laws."

In the face of such demands, Prime Minister John Major's government distanced itself from the right-wing campaign seeking to change existing legislation on abortion. "Stephen Dorrell, the Secretary of State for Health," reported the Independent, "was resisting demands from the pro-life group for an inquiry. There is consensus across the main political parties over abortion law."

The 1967 Abortion Act applies throughout Great Britain but not in Northern Ireland. It permits termination of pregnancy up to the 24th week. The law allows a wide latitude of reasons for abortion, even if childbearing would not cause risks to the health of the mother or child.

The debate has continued in the press. It followed an earlier controversy over the destruction of an estimated 3,000 frozen in vitro embryos, required by a British law that bars embryo storage beyond five years without the consent of the donors of the sperm and egg that created them.

In a commentary in the August 6 Times, columnist Libby Purves lamented the implications of these cases. "Thousands of frozen embryos are being destroyed; meanwhile a healthy woman of 28 has asked to have one healthy twin killed in her womb because she says she cannot cope with it," she wrote. She said the controversies reveal nothing new, while any "moral shift" that has taken place was "by gradual attrition, over decades... Like a drunk waking up in a particular sordid gutter, we have suddenly seen in a flash of clarity what the heedless years have brought us."

Purves praised "the few religious voices that were raised in opposition to IVF [in vitro fertilization]." And she continued, "As for abortion, the 1967 Act was never intended to produce abortion on demand. I was 17 at the time, a cradle Catholic but a dissident one and an avid follower of women's issues. Perhaps the most useful thing I can do now is to trace, on behalf of a generation, the shifting attitude which led us to our present bleak pass."

Purves's regrets notwithstanding, the successful fight to legalize abortion and to defend abortion rights since then has been over the right of every woman to choose abortion and have access to it on demand. The ruling class has not been able to roll back these gains.

The majority of people support the right to choose today. This is reflected in the stance of the Major government. And recently, Health Secretary Dorrell felt compelled publicly reject calls for "tough new guidelines" on IVF treatment.

The Major government, already facing a crisis over its diminishing role in Ireland and Europe, feels it is not strong enough to undertake any frontal assault on abortion rights today. At the same time, the right-wing propaganda generated around these cases shows that probes aimed at undermining abortion rights can escalate.  
 
 
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