Nurses can perform surgical abortions, according to a new interpretation of the law.

An analysis of the Abortion Act and subsequent case law suggests that it is legal for a nurse to perform early operations as long as a doctor is in overall charge, but not necessarily present.

At the moment, nurses working as part of a team often administer medications to induce abortions.

But Vincent Argent, a consultant gynaecologist with legal training and Lin Pavey, a nurse and former clinic manager in Brighton with the British Pregnancy Advice Service, argue that nurses should also be able to perform early surgical abortions.

Their analysis is published in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care.

They said: “Our analysis of the Abortion Act 1967 and the RCN v DHSS case shows that registered nurses and midwives could currently perform surgical abortions themselves as long as a medical practitioner is in overall charge even if the medical practitioner is not physically present.”

In an accompanying commentary, Gill Wakley said that the analysis should be examined by the Department of Health, General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council. She said: “An expansion of the role of nurses could offer improvements in the quality and access of provision for early termination of pregnancy.”

Madelaine Ward, a family planning nurse and former chairwoman of the Abortion Law Reform Association (now Abortion Rights), said: “In so many areas of health provision, nurses have provided improvements in access to and quality of care.

“The time is now right for nurses to be trained to perform early surgical abortions under the supervision of a registered medical practitioner.

“I hope lobbying by the professions will now happen without delay.” Anthony Ozimic, political secretary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said: “Do nurses really want to perform abortions, the killing of innocent human beings?

“The pro-abortion lobby claim that so-called safe, legal abortion was necessary to safeguard women’s health — yet having achieved legal abortion, the pro-abortion lobby now wants to remove safeguards by getting nurses to do doctors’ dirty work for them.

“This proposal would seem to have less to do with women’s health and more to do with an ideological agenda to maximise the numbers of abortions, in the light of fewer and fewer doctors willing to butcher babies in the womb.”

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