This is cross-posted at liberalconspiracy.org [1]:

An abortion rights update for you all:
Tis the 1967 Abortion Act's enactment birthday this week, people, and our friends over at Abortion Rights are suggesting a number of activities [2] (no off-colour comments, please) to mark this major occasion.

One excellent way to observe the anniversary yourself is to send a stiff letter to your MP, telling them to vote against any anti-abortion amendments to the Abortion Act that conservative political opportunists try to sneak onto the agenda as the now-famous Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [3] progresses through parliament this spring.

Here and over at LC, we've argued [4] - correctly - that the HFEB has absolutely nothing to do with abortion law (it's about regulating the sciences of fertilisation and embryology, and - that's it. The End).

Alas, the pro-life loonies keep refusing to make the leap.

Their hangup is the current 24-week time limit for the legal abortion: it is wrong, they say, to abort a 24-week-old fetus now that more and more babies born at around that time are saved.

Except that they're not, as the rest of us well know: parliament’s science and technology committee investigated the question of foetal viability last year, and reported that while survival rates for babies born at 24 weeks and over had improved to an extent, they hadn't done so below that 24-week point. The committee found no case whatsoever for reducing that time limit.

When you remember that only a tiny number of abortions are carried out around the 24-week mark, and that there are usually excellent reasons for these late terminations (foetal abnormality, and so on and so forth), you realise how mischievous the pro-life lobby is when it tries to centre abortion debate on this very marginal issue of time limit.

Mad Nads Dorries [5] continues as chief perpetrator here.

Unable to substantiate her rantings on the evils of the 24-week time-limit with the facts [6], she has been forced to try and clown it out on the back of famous internet hoaxes. This has not been without its amusing aspect: few who enjoyed it at the time will have forgotten Nads' hilarious attempt to pass the famed 'Hand of Hope' photo off [7] as a genuine foetal publicity stunt.

In my more generous moments, I find it difficult to believe that members of the voting public are still dopey enough to embrace this sort of half-wittery to quite the extent that Nads thinks they will.

We can only assume that some are, though, and that is why we must do everything we can to see the likes of Nads off the park.

After all - our very own weak and useless Gordon Brown has just offered god-fearing members of his majestically dysfunctional party a conscience vote on controversial parts of the HFEB [8]. One doesn't need to be a terminal cynic to wonder if those god-fearing Labour party members demanded such a deal because they were at least as afraid of losing the middle-England vote as they were of browning the Almighty off.

Whatever the case, they must be brought back down to the earth on which most of us live. Our MPs need to be reminded that the majority of us support existing abortion law and the medical advances presented by the science of embryology. We'll be doing just that over at LC.