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decision"- the "someones else' being the doctor or some other expert at living our lives for us. An upper time limit represents state intervention in our personal lives. We want the state to provide abortion facilities, we do not want it to tell us when we can use them.
We do not believe that our fertility or sexuality is an area in which we as woman need protecting from ourselves.
Many of us would not choose to have a late abortion, but, we must realise that we have no right to generalise from such personal feelings and prevent other women from choosing termination at any stage.
We say "Not the church and Not the State" and we must be clear that neither can we ourselves decide another woman's fate, We cannot support "abortion on condition" of *abortion until a certain time" if we stand for a woman's right to choose.
This also raises the problem of what punishment we would give to women who did have late abortions-would we nrosecute them ? Is legislating against late abortions the way to ensure carly abortions?
Early Safe Abortions Given the medical complications in late abortion we do not believe women will take the decision lightly. At present 80% of NHS abortions take place within the first 12 weeks, 90% of those done by the charitable clinics, who do 2/3 of all private abortions. If we had no restrictions on a woman's right to choose and plenty of day care abortion clinics we have no doubt that these figures would be a lot higher. In a late termination, the medical procedures should be fully explained along with all the hazards and the woman should be left to make up her own mind. We want early safe abortions which will eradicate the need for late ones, but we cannot close our eyes to women's need for late abortions even under these circumstances.
What we want To enable us to obtain a woman's right to choose in law, we would require the abolition of the Infant Life Preservation Act, the 1967 Abortion Act, and their replacement with a law stating that it is no offence to have or perform an abortion.
To extend this choice in law to a choice in practice we require improved facilities and sympathetic staff.
Under the NHS Reorganisation there is a duty laid on the Secretary of State to provide adequate contraceptive facilities. This should be extended to include facilities for abortion, specifying a certain level of facilities per area.
In NAC's campaign for day care abortion clinics we will be fighting to make this a reality, since we know that a change in the law would guarantee nothing.
Any gains we may achieve in law or around facilities will only be won through our self activity as women in a mass campaign challenging the role of Parliament in restricting our rights. We can only rely on our own strength as a self led women's struggle which has the support of and participation of the WLM, the student movement and sections of the labour movement.
We have to win support around the idea of a woman's right to choose legislation and what that entails in practice.