Tensions in the Regulation of Abortion in Britain

This article discusses policy and practice in abortion provision, paying particular attention to the provision of counselling before abortion. It discusses the way the Abortion Act 1967 constructs the woman seeking abortion, the reasons for the development of a policy about abortion counselling in the 1970s, and that policy's relationship to the assumptions about women underlying the statute. The ways in which policy has developed since 1977 are considered, and how policy and practice have come to view women seeking abortion in a way that contrasts with the construction of them that emerges from the law. Thus, the article argues, given that the 1967 Act and other rules that regulate abortion provision seem to rest on contradictory assumptions, the law should be reformed in line with policy and practice.