MPs COULD vote within a year on lowering the 24-week legal time limit for abortions, after Tony Blair backed a rethink of the law to take account of scientific change.

The Prime Minister signalled his support for a Commons vote when he told MPs that “if the scientific evidence has shifted, then it is obviously sensible for us to take that into account”. He also made it clear that MPs would be able to vote according to their conscience.

Mr Blair’s stance took some MPs by surprise and Downing Street later insisted that the remarks did not signal a change of policy. However, there was growing support last night from MPs to reconsider an emotive issue which has not come before the Commons for nearly 15 years.

Ian Gibson, Labour chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, told The Times last night that on scientific grounds alone there was good reason for the matter to be re-examined. “There has been such a big inflow of information since we last set the limit that, putting all the political issues aside, there is a case for looking at it again.”

Advances in the care of premature babies mean that a handful now survive at 22 weeks’ gestation. This change, and the photographs published in newspapers last week of foetuses moving and even appearing to walk in the womb at 12 weeks, are behind the calls for a rethink.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which is responsible for the great majority of abortions carried out for social reasons at over 20 weeks, said yesterday: “I am almost sure that the time limit is going to be looked at. Any review of the Act now is going to be seen as an opportunity to look again at time limits.”

Ministers last night saw two potential opportunities for a new vote. A backbencher could bring forward a Bill to reduce the limit in the new session of Parliament in November or legislation could arise from a fast-track review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act which set the 24-week limit in 1990.

The Department of Health announced the review because of the fast-changing science of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). But pro-abortion groups now believe that it could be used to provide an opportunity to change the time limit. In 1990 MPs considered a number of options ranging from 18 weeks to the 28 weeks existing then. Mr Blair voted for 24 weeks and John Reid, now the Health Secretary, voted for 18 weeks.

Lord Steel of Aikwood, the former Liberal leader and architect of the 1967 Abortion Act that set the limit at 28 weeks, has called for Parliament to consider a lower limit because of the advance in technology. The limit was reduced to 24 weeks on a free vote in 1990 and some campaigners have called for it to be set as low as 12 weeks.

In 1990 anti-abortion campaigners failed to achieve their minimum aim, a reduction to 22 weeks.

That was under a Conservative government and until now it has appeared unlikely that a Labour-dominated House would want to go further.

Lord Steel has said that in 1966-67 the law on an upper time limit was based on the existing 28-week assumption of “viability” of a foetus contained in the Infant Life Preservation Act of 1929. As techniques advanced, the limit was cut to 24 weeks in 1990. Since then medical science has continued to advance, recording survivals at 22 weeks of pregnancy. Opinion remains that abortions should be carried out as early as possible, Lord Steel added.

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