Maria Caulfield says current 24-week limit is one of most liberal abortion laws in the world

Maria Caulfield, the Conservative party’s vice-chair for women, has called for a debate on reducing the 24-week time limit for women to receive legal abortions.

In remarks that drew criticism from Labour, the MP for Lewes said the 1967 Abortion Act – which applies to England, Scotland and Wales – was “one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world”.

In an interview with the House magazine, Caulfield, who is a member of the all-party parliamentary pro-life group said: “We’re up to 24 weeks, in most parts of Europe it’s 15, 16 weeks. With medical advances, we’ve got babies born now at 18, 19 weeks. I think it’s something like 50% of babies after 22 weeks are viable and yet abortion is still freely available up to 24 weeks.

“I’m not someone who’s hard and fast in any of those kinds of views. But I think we do need to have a debate.

“The 24-week limit was introduced at a time when babies were really not viable at 24 weeks. Now babies who are born premature grow up to live long, healthy lives like the rest of us.”

Jess Phillips, chair of the women’s parliamentary Labour party, criticised Caulfield’s comments. She said: “Maria Caulfield is anti-choice and should have the guts to say it rather than pussyfooting with step-by-step limiting measures.

“She bases her views not on clinical evidence but on conservative attitudes that don’t trust women to make the choices that are right for them. I trust clinicians and women, not those who wish to control us.”

Theresa May’s appointment of Caulfield to a new role as vice-chair for women provoked outrage because of her views on abortion. She also opposed a Labour bill to amend a nineteenth-century law to decriminalise women ending pregnancies. Diana Johnson, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North, won the right to change part of a law instated in 1861, with a vote that succeeded by 172 votes to 142.

Under present law, a woman must receive approval from two doctors that terminating a pregnancy would be in the interests of her health.

Caulfield was a strong critic of the bill and urged her colleagues in the House of Commons to be “wary of greater liberalisation of the law”, with abortion pills available to buy online.

According to Caulfield, having to see two doctors protects vulnerable women.

“So, women who are maybe being pressurised into having an abortion by a partner, women who are maybe being pressurised into sex selective abortion … it’s a very traumatic time and lots of women are uncertain about definitely going ahead with it,” she said.

In a statement, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service said that Caulfield’s suggestion that babies born at 18 or 19 weeks could survive was inaccurate.

“It seems extraordinary that a nurse who claims she is interested in “evidence-based laws” can be so profoundly uninterested in truth or fact,” the statement said. “It is Maria Caulfield’s utter lack of interest in why a woman may need to make that choice [to have an abortion] that is so disappointing, as a politician who has been appointed by her party as vice-chair for women.”