The beleaguered head of Britain's leading abortion-providing charity will today inflame her critics by calling for women to be given easier access to terminations over 20 weeks.
Ann Furedi, who came under fire after a newspaper revealed that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service had helped women travelling to Spain for terminations after the UK legal limit of 24 weeks, will tell her annual conference of 250 doctors involved in abortion clinics that much of the current debate is "ill-informed and exaggerated".
"We're going to argue that there are very good reasons why women require abortions up to the legal time limit," she said yesterday. "The real scandal of late abortions is that women well within the legal time limit cannot access services because there are too few providers."
The BPAS came under attack after a journalist working for the Sunday Telegraph who was 26 weeks pregnant sought their help, claiming she wanted an abortion. She was referred to a clinic in Spain, where the law permits abortion beyond the 24-week UK limit, in cases where the mother's psychological or physical health is in grave danger. The government's chief medical officer has been asked to investigate.
Ms Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, says it is perfectly legitimate for the agency to give women information about abortion providers abroad. When a woman has sought help before the 24-week limit and BPAS has not been able to give her an appointment, it has even made the arrangements for her.
The bigger issue, says Ms Furedi, which is being drowned out in the clamour, is the shortage of provision for women who do not discover - or in some cases admit to themselves - they are pregnant until near the legal limit, or who change their minds.
"We're saying that instead of being concerned about the problem of too many late abortions taking place, the women who present themselves for them have very good reasons and it should really be a priority within sexual health care," she said.
BPAS provides 80% of late abortions - those after 20 weeks - but sometimes cannot provide a termination within the legal time limit. Plenty of money has gone into providing early abortion services within the NHS, she says, "but late abortion services remain pretty neglected and nobody wants to talk about it because it is controversial and an unpleasant procedure".
Just under 3,000 abortions out of nearly 200,000 are carried out after 20 weeks. For those who leave it late, it is often an agonising decision, she said.
There may be circumstances in their lives that make the choice hard - they may be trying to persuade their husband that he wants a child, or they may have just discovered that he has had an affair and is about to leave.
A high proportion are teenagers of 14 or 15 who have not been able to face up to the fact that they are pregnant and put off telling their parents.
"People's lives are incredibly complex," she said. "The general perception of abortion, on the other hand, is simplistic - that it is never a good thing, but that early in pregnancy it is acceptable."
