The campaign to relax abortion laws is about feminist dogma - not medicine, writes MAX PEMBERTON

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Professor Lesley Regan is a highly regarded doctor

Professor Lesley Regan is a highly regarded doctor, with more than 30 years of experience. She is also President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Yet despite her expertise and esteemed position, I wonder if she has taken leave of her senses. She has just argued that having an abortion should be treated no differently to any other medical procedure, likening it to having a bunion removed.

But they are different, aren't they? You don't need to be a professor of obstetrics to know that a bunion is different to a foetus. The question of whether the foetus has rights and, if so, what those rights are and at what point they come into effect is incredibly complex and emotive.

It is something philosophers, ethicists, doctors, lawyers, theologians and many of the general public have grappled with for years. There is no simple answer, and it is beholden on someone of Professor Regan's great office to at least acknowledge this fact, regardless of her personal opinion.

Let's be clear here, her announcement is not to do with medicine. It's a political statement — an alignment with a particular liberal ideology that states that abortion should be available on demand, no questions asked.

Current law states abortions are illegal without consent from two doctors. Yet there is a political movement that demands that all legal limitations on abortion are removed.

This demand was backed last year by the Royal College of Midwives' chief executive Cathy Warwick. But it has profound implications. It means that the UK would join a tiny handful of countries — such as China and Vietnam — where abortion is legal on demand up until birth. When it comes to human rights, I'm never one to feel comfortable following China's lead.

Although Professor Regan has stated she thinks the abortion limit should remain, many argue that the decriminalising of abortion will mean current safeguards will disappear and late-stage abortions will inevitably become more common. This makes me feel profoundly uneasy.

Professor Regan, who has practised as an obstetrician and gynaecologist for 33 years, said there had been a ‘societal shift’, particularly among medical professionals (file photo)

I am aware, of course, that if there is one topic in medicine guaranteed to generate controversy, it's abortion. Its mere mention polarises opinion: for or against, pro-life or pro-choice. How has it come to this?

Let me say that I unreservedly support a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy, and have no moral objection to abortion per se. I am aware that not everyone will agree with me, but I have thought long and hard about this.

Indeed, while a medical student I assisted in terminations of pregnancy as part of my training. It was a carefully made and personal decision. While many of my fellow students decided against it, I thought that if I accept abortion should be permitted as a medical procedure, then I should know what it entails.

My objections to Professor Regan's statements are not because I am closed-minded about abortion. They stem from the fact that I feel the issue has been hijacked by a political movement founded on ideology and dogma. It is wholly disingenuous of Professor Regan to present the issue as simply a legal quirk from a bygone era that can be quickly sorted out with the swish of the legislative pen.

Abortion for a great many people is a profound question and one that deserves our respect. To them, terminating a pregnancy can never be regarded in the same way as removing a piece of deformed bone, to use Professor Regan's crass example. It is destroying a life.

But ethical questions aside, from a medical perspective, an abortion is not a procedure without risk. There is a range of possible complications, from infections through to life-endangering haemorrhage.

Of course, most abortions are safe, but Professor Regan is making them appear quick, simple and harmless when they are not.

And I fear that, by sending out this message, it will lead to people being more blasé about contraception because they know that they can get a quick abortion if necessary.

And as I said, I am also worried that if abortion is decriminalised, we could soon be seeing late-stage abortions on demand as the pro-choice lobby makes ever more strident demands.

I am not alone in this. As the Mail reveals today, 650 doctors have signed a letter to Professor Regan to object to her moves to put the weight of the College where she is President behind the campaign to decriminalise abortion. They argue that not only is the campaign 'extreme' but will lead to 'termination on demand' up to and possibly beyond 28 weeks gestation.

This brings me to what is surely a far more pressing issue than the decriminalisation of abortion, and one that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists really should be focusing on.

When today's abortion laws were written, there was a safe margin between the upper limit for termination and the age at which babies survived. But over the years, as medicine has advanced, that margin has become smaller and smaller.

We are now at the deeply unsettling stage where, in the same hospital, doctors are trying to save a premature baby born at, say 23 weeks, while a woman down the corridor is legally allowed to undergo an abortion on a foetus of the same gestation.

So, on the one hand, we throw considerable money and resources at trying to save a baby's life, while on the other sanctioning another's destruction.

The current legal limit for terminating a pregnancy is 24 weeks, although later abortions are allowed if there is grave risk to the woman's life or evidence of severe foetal abnormality.

The vast majority of terminations occur at 13 weeks or before, with only a fraction — less than 2 per cent — occurring after 20 weeks. But, even so, this still accounts for about 3,000 terminations a year.

The laws surrounding medicine must be dynamic: they must be able to change and adapt to advances made — and there is a real argument for reducing the upper limit. What might have been appropriate in the past is no longer fit for purpose.

Surely this is what Professor Regan and her College should be focusing on. Yet it seems she is concerned not on the foetus's survival but the woman's right to choose.

One in three women in the UK will undergo a termination before the age of 45, so this issue resonates with many people on a profound level.

For feminists to politicise abortion in this way, and to insist that everything a woman wants she should get, regardless of the ethical issues, is nothing short of outrageous.