The 1967 Abortion Act fifty years on: Abortion, medical authority and the law revisited

The recent 50th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act provides the opportunity to

revisit what has been termed the ‘remarkable authority’ this Act ascribes to doctors.

This paper does so using as its starting point a seminal commentary on this question

by the renowned medical sociologist Sally Macintyre, published in this journal in

1973 as ‘The Medical Profession and the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain’. We revisit

themes from that paper through an analysis of the findings of interviews with 14

doctors who, throughout lengthy careers, have provided abortions and led the

development of the abortion service in England and Wales. We contrast our findings

with Macintyre’s, and argue that our interviews highlight the shifting meaning of

medical authority and medical professionalism. We show that those doctors most

involved in providing abortions place moral value on this work; uphold the authority

of women (not doctors) in abortion decision-making; view nurses and midwives as

professional collaborators; and consider their professional and clinical judgement

impeded by the present law. We conclude that medical sociologists have much to gain

by taking abortion provision as a focus for the further exploration of the shifting meaning of medical authority.