Zoe Williams alleges that I am anti-abortion and have been less than honest about the issue (Time to speak up, G2, October 27). She has never contacted me to discuss the matter so she would have to rely on the parliamentary record. This shows that I was a member of the science and technology select committee which called for there to be a parliamentary inquiry into whether scientific and medical advances have reduced the age of foetal viability, and indeed - together with social advances - can inform other changes to an abortion law that has gone largely unchanged for 39 years.
As Ms Williams points out, there is little peer-reviewed published evidence suggesting a reduction in the threshold of foetal viability below 24 weeks. But there is plenty of press speculation, with MPs of all parties calling for a reduction in the time limit and then plucking a new figure - from 12 to 22 weeks - apparently from thin air. In my view, a proper review would confirm 24 weeks as the right limit for viability. Even if such a review made a case for a lower point, parliamentarians could (as many would) vote, on practical grounds, to keep the current abortion time limit - given the very small number of women in desperate circumstances requesting the procedure at late gestations.
Abortion Rights - an advocacy organisation promoted by Ms Williams - has long called for such rights to be extended to Northern Ireland, for the requirement for two doctors to sign off abortion to be dropped, and for different types of abortion to be provided in more places and by a wider range of healthcare professionals. Yet, astonishingly, these issues have only been raised once in the House of Commons in the past 16 years. That was when I secured a 90-minute adjournment debate in July last year. My reward for raising these issues was hundreds of hate letters from anti-abortionists, who had read what I had said in favour of liberal reform, and yet another critical article from Ms Williams, who clearly had not (A cowardly position, January 31).
Ms Williams laments the lack of open debate in Parliament about liberalising a 39-year-old rule. But if the response of the pro-choice lobby is to attack their allies, then it is hardly surprising that politicians are not willing to go there. The upper time limit was reduced to 24 weeks in 1990. That apart, there has been no substantive opportunity to reform the law. It is only right and democratic that every few years there is a chance for those who are elected, to debate and decide abortion policy.
The recent private members bill to reduce the time limit to 21 weeks was easily defeated at its first hurdle. Since there is currently a large pro-choice majority in the Commons, pro-choice campaigners should recognise that it is sensible to have a rational review of the medical, scientific and social issues as a precursor to an early parliamentary debate on liberalisation.
Voters can never give the governing party a mandate to conserve or reform abortion law, since it is a non-party issue at a general election. Waiting for a more reactionary House of Commons to do this in future does not seem sensible.
· Dr Evan Harris is the Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon
