Anti-abortion MPs take fight to Lords with foetus scans

Three-dimensional images of a foetus "walking" in the womb are to be shown to MPs and peers by a cross-party alliance of campaigners in an attempt to persuade the House of Lords to tighten the law on abortion.

Scans produced by Professor Stuart Campbell have been dismissed as misleading by pro-abortion MPs, who insist that the foetus is not sufficiently developed to feel pain until much later.

But campaigners for tighter abortion laws will use the images to try to persuade more MPs and peers to back their call for the upper time limit for abortion to be reduced from 24 weeks to the European average of 13 weeks.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill published yesterday will give Parliament the first vote on abortion law for a decade. Jim Dobbin, the Labour chairman of the all-party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, said: "We will need to bring Professor Campbell into Parliament. People need to see his film because it just makes you think about the issue."

Mr Dobbin admitted he did not think there was a majority in the Commons for a reduction in the time limit, but he said the campaign could swing the vote by next year, when MPs will get the chance to vote. "I detect a change of mood going on," he said.

The Government is rushing the Bill into the House of Lords for a Second Reading on 19 November. The campaigners in the Lords, including the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Alton, believe that they have a better chance of victory in the Lords by mobilising the bishops, Conservatives and cross-bench peers.

Lord Steel, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who was the author of the legislation in 1967 to legalise abortion, has also expressed concern at the number of abortions rising to 200,000 a year, which he said was never intended.

Pro-abortion MPs, which include most women Labour MPs, could be faced with having to remove clauses introduced in the Lords to tighten the abortion laws. Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health minister, who will steer the Bill through the House of Commons, has said that there is no scientific evidence for reducing the upper time limit for abortion.

The Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology also supported her stand, and called for the abortion law to be liberalised rather than tightened. But two Tory members, Bob Spink and Nadine Dorries, issued a minority report and claimed that it had been hijacked by the pro-choice campaign.