Submitted by: The Abortion Law Reform Association and NCW Branches at Dorchester, Northwood, Nuneaton, Hereford and Croydon

The National Council of Women of Great Britain in Conference assembled asked the Government to implement that section of the 1939 Home Office and Ministry of Health Inter-departmental Committee Report on Abortion, which recommended that the Statute of 1861 should be amended to make it “unmistakably clear that a medical practitioner is acting legally when in good faith he procures the abortion of a pregnant woman in circumstances which satisfy him that continuance of the pregnancy is likely to endanger her life or seriously to impair her health”, with the additional provision that he should act with the sanction of a second medical colleague.

In addition, the Council urges that induced abortion be legalised –

            (a) where there is a grave risk of a seriously defective child being born;

            (b) where the pregnancy results from a sexual offence (such as rape or incest)