MORE than 50 babies with club feet were aborted in just one area of England in a three-year period, according to new statistics.

Thirty-seven babies with cleft lips or palates and 26 with extra or webbed fingers or toes were also aborted.

The data have raised concerns about abortions being carried out for minor disabilities that could be cured by surgery.

Abortions are allowed up to birth in Britain in cases of serious handicap, but the law does not define what conditions should be considered grave enough to allow a termination late in the pregnancy. That is left to the discretion of doctors.

The Commons science and technology committee is carrying out an inquiry into whether the law should be made more specific.

Some parents, doctors and campaign groups are worried by what they see as a tendency to stretch the definition of serious handicap.

In 2003 Joanna Jepson, a Church of England curate, instigated a legal challenge against West Mercia police for failing to prosecute doctors who carried out an abortion on a baby with a cleft palate at 28 weeks’ gestation. The challenge failed but raised public concerns over terminations for minor disabilities.

However, the latest figures — released by the South West Congenital Anomaly Register — show that dozens of abortions are still carried out after the condition is discovered.

Jepson, now vicar of St Peter’s church in Fulham, west London, said: “These figures raise grave questions about how the law is being implemented for babies diagnosed with a disability. I have strong doubts that the law is being used to protect the unborn.”

Julia Millington, political director of the ProLife Alliance, added: “It is incomprehensible that a baby would be rejected for what amounts to little more than a cosmetic imperfection. Equality for the disabled cannot be achieved until we remove this discriminatory provision in the law.”

The figures record abortions for congenital anomalies in southwest England from Cornwall to Wiltshire between 2002 and 2005. They show that 54 babies with club feet, 16 with extra or webbed fingers and 10 with extra or webbed toes were aborted. The stage at which the abortions were carried out was not recorded, but the abnormalities would have been diagnosed at about 20 weeks’ gestation.

Welsh data show babies were aborted for cleft lips and palates at 27, 29 and 34 weeks between 1998 and 2005.

Tim Overton, consultant in foetal medicine at St Michael’s hospital, Bristol, and a member of the register’s steering committee, said he doubted that any of the abortions would have been carried out solely because of a club foot or an extra digit

— a condition known as polydactyly. He said: “We know polydactyly can be associated with [other] genetic problems that we cannot diagnose in the womb but that can have very serious long-term consequences.

“Cleft palate and cleft lip can also be associated with underlying genetic syndromes that we cannot diagnose in the womb.”

For full data click here

For further details of late abortions in Wales for cleft palate and lip, see slide headed "Outcome by gestational age for all clefts in Wales (1998-2005)" on page 20 of this document

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