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Last week, Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister, told the committee that the Government did not believe there was enough evidence to justify a change in the law.

Ms Primarolo told the MPs that a foetus’s chance of surviving at early gestational ages had not improved despite advances in care. Studies showed that the chance of survival to discharge from hospital was zero per cent for babies born at 21 weeks, 1 per cent at 22 weeks and 11 per cent at 23 weeks.

She told MPs that lowering the age definition for viability would imply that survival rates had improved, and "they have not in the consensus of evidence we have".

Abortions after 24 weeks are allowed if there is grave risk to the woman or evidence of severe foetal abnormality. According to the most recent figures, the number of abortions in England and Wales stood at 193,700 in 2006, compared with 186,400 in 2005.

A breakdown of the statistics for 2006 showed that 136 abortions were performed at 24 weeks and over. There were 17,917 abortions performed between 13 and 19 weeks, and between 20 and 23 weeks there were 2,812. Most abortions - 89 per cent - are performed before 13 weeks gestation.

The last time the Abortion Act was amended was in 1990, when the time limit was reduced from 28 to 24 weeks.

As well as internal disagreements within the committee, the report also caused anger among pro-life campaigners.

Labour MP Jim Dobbin, chairman of the all-party Pro-Life group, said it "deplored" the way the committee had rejected key findings. He said it had "ignored key scientific developments" which are crucial to the abortion debate.

"The narrowness of the inquiry in refusing to consider ethical arguments surrounding abortion is also deeply worrying. Abortion is an ethical and social issue as well as a scientific one," he added. "The imbalance of witnesses also skewed the outcome of the evidence presented. We believe there is a clear scientific case to be made to reduce the upper limit for social abortions from 24 weeks."

Anne Weyman, chief executive of the FPA (formerly Family Planning Association, welcomed the report's recommendations to make access to terminations easier.

"Forcing women to ask the permission of two separate doctors before she can have an abortion is antiquated, unnecessary and patronising," she said. "The committee are completely right to support the removal of this requirement. We endorse the committee’s findings that suitably trained nurses should be able to carry out early medical and surgical abortions in Britain, as they do in other countries.

"We very much welcome the committee’s recommendation that women should be able to choose whether to have the second stage of medical abortion at home."

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the charity BPAS, which provides around 60,000 abortions each year, said: "This pragmatic and sensible report provides a valuable reference point for anyone who is thinking seriously about how modern abortion care should be provided. An evidence-based report like this shows up the 40-year-old Abortion Act, which was framed in different era of medicine, as now looking a little threadbare."

She supported the idea of new powers for nurses, saying: "In other areas of healthcare, nurses are seen as capable practitioners in their own right. Early abortions are not more complex than other procedures that nurses perform routinely.

"We all know that our doctors’ and GPs’ time is precious, so why retain a clinically useless administrative burden on them to double-sign abortion forms? This 1960s requirement can delay women from getting the earliest and least invasive treatment possible - while sending a pretty poor message about how women’s decision-making is looked upon."

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