Campaigners slam abortion limits
British abortion limits were branded "barbaric" by an MP launching a fresh drive to cut the upper limit from 24 to 20 weeks.
Conservative Nadine Dorries said scientific advances had proved babies as young as 20 weeks felt pain and could survive outside the womb.
A former nurse, Ms Dorries is tabling an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would lower the upper limit for "social" abortions, and claimed the support of almost 200 MPs.
The Government and the British Medical Association (BMA) have rejected calls for the time restrictions to be tightened, insisting scientific evidence did not justify it.
But Ms Dorries, launching her campaign in Westminster, said: "The abortion process, post-20 weeks is frankly not the mark of a decent society because as a process itself it is frankly barbaric."
Flanked by supporters, including doctors, she insisted she was "pro choice".
"The mother has rights, has the right to choose, but there does come a point where the baby has rights also," she told reporters.
"For us, those rights come when if that baby was allowed to be born it would stand a chance to live and if, as part of that abortion procedure, that foetus or that baby suffers pain which we also know is factual now. We think that's where we draw the line in the sand; 24 weeks is too late."
Ms Dorries said Britain had become the "abortion capital of Europe", terminating 200,000 pregnancies a year - second only to Ukraine.
"That to me is not the mark of a decent and civilised society," she said, pointing to France and Germany where the limit was half that of the UK.
