THE Conservatives have pledged to allow parliamentary time for a vote to reduce the time limit for abortions, after Michael Howard referred to the current system as “abortion on demand”.

Abortion has never before been made a national election issue by a political party. In parliamentary votes it is left to the MP’s conscience.

Today in a pre-election letter to followers Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, asks believers to think carefully about the parties’ stance on “right to life” issues before they vote.

After Mr Howard’s remarks to Cosmopolitan magazine, David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said yesterday that changing the law to reduce the time limit would be “the morally sensible thing to do”.

In the interview the Tory leader described the current situation as “tantamount to abortion on demand”, and promised to vote to cut the deadline for abortions from 24 weeks to 20 weeks. “I believe abortion should be available to everyone, but the law should be changed,” Mr Howard told the women’s magazine as part of its “high-heeled vote” campaign. “In the past I voted for a restriction to 22 weeks and I would be prepared to go down to 20.”

All three main parties offer a free vote on abortion, but traditionally the issue is raised through a Private Member’s Bill, rather than a pledge of government time for a debate.

Mr Howard emphasised that his comments to the magazine were his personal view, but Mr Davis went further, pledging to give time to an abortion debate if the party was elected.

“I think what (Mr Howard) is saying is that we would give time for that to happen,” he told Sky’s Sunday programme. “What Michael is saying is some of these very late abortions — sometimes there are very serious reasons behind them — but these very late abortions carry the prospect of real cruelty to the foetuses, to the children involved.”

Mr Davis said that he and Mr Howard would prefer to “bring it back to a more, what he sees and I see, I think, as a more sensible time. Now, it is a moral issue but it is an important one and I think he is right.”

Mr Davis cited “stories of, without any medical assistance the foetuses surviving after abortion for a time. It is a pretty horrible prospect,” he said. Were reducing the time-limit put to Parliament, he said, “it might well command a majority”.

The magazine also asked the leaders of other parties about the issue. Mr Blair told Cosmopolitan: “However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalise a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice,” he said. “Obviously there is a time beyond which you can’t have an abortion, and we have no plans to change that although the debate will continue.” Charles Kennedy, the Lib Dem leader, said he had previously voted for a 22-week limit, but given medical advances, “I don’t know what I would do now”.

One Labour backbencher, Stephen Pound, said of Mr Howard’s approach: “This is the George Bush agenda. Michael Howard has seen there’s a hard-right fundamentalist, anti-abortionist, tax-cutting agenda that’s worked in America,” he told GMTV’s Sunday.

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