The anguished arguments voiced in the Commons Science and Technology Committee on a possible tightening of time limits on abortion is a timely reminder that, 40 years after the passage of the landmark Abortion Act, the issue remains as controversial as ever. That is absolutely right. Abortion challenges some of society’s most deeply held convictions and beliefs, one that pits a woman’s liberty of choice and right to authority over her own body against strongly held convictions on the sanctity of life and revulsion at the moral and physical toll that abortion takes on those undergoing terminations.

The issue is not one to be debated lightly. Nor should it ever become routine, either in consideration or in practice. Those who pressed for the legalisation of abortion in 1967 did so largely to end the dangerous and degrading backstreet operations, carried out by unscrupulous and often unqualified practitioners, that caused such suffering to thousands of desperate women. The framers of the original Bill were moved by compassion, not by the mores of permissiveness. Abortion was only ever, they said, to be a last resort.

That principle has been dangerously undermined. Although the time limit has been reduced from 28 to 24 weeks, the number of abortions has been steadily rising. Last year there were 193,700, compared with 186,400 in 2005, and there is evidence that abortion is now seen in some quarters simply as a convenience, a cost-free way of dealing with irresponsibility over contraception. The remark by Lord Steel of Aikwood, the architect of the original Act, that too many abortions were now taking place is particularly telling.

Much of the debate yesterday centred on demands for a further reduction in the time limit. The argument was that medical advances have made it more possible for a foetus to survive after 24 weeks of gestation, whereas the chances of survival after only 20 weeks were still virtually nil. This is, however, largely beside the point. Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister, told the Commons committee that the medical consensus was still that the concept of viability cannot be continually pushed back in terms of a date. Much depends on what is understood by “viability”. But however vast the improvements in medical care, no baby born after an extremely short gestation is likely to lead an untroubled life.

There are, in any case, relatively few abortions at such a late stage – officially no more than 136 were performed last year at 24 weeks or more, and in almost all cases they were occasioned by the discovery of a life-threatening condition to either the mother or the foetus. Some 89 per cent of operations were carried out within 13 weeks and 68 per cent of those were under 10 weeks.

Those against abortion often focus on the wrong issue. They should direct national energies into more vigorous campaigns on responsible contraception, better support networks for women and a more candid acknowledgment of the toll that abortion takes on people and on society. There must be choice, but one has only to look at Soviet Russia, where women routinely had five or six abortions, to see the terrible cost in fecundity and women’s health of multiple abortions. What must change is the appalling casualness with which the issue is sometimes treated by those who regard the most profound decisions as a prosaic process.