Horrified midwives are mutinying after their union boss signed them up to an ‘abhorrent’ plan to scrap the time limit on abortions – without asking them.

Cathy Warwick is facing calls to quit as chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) over what critics say is a blatant conflict of interest.

As well as leading the nation’s 30,000 midwives, Prof Warwick is chairman of the country’s biggest abortion provider, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS).

Cathy Warwick, who is the The Royal College of Midwives Chief Executive and General Secretary

And without consulting members, she signed the union up to the service’s campaign to ‘decriminalise’ abortion by scrapping the 24-week legal cut-off for terminations.

Last night, ‘appalled’ MPs said Prof Warwick should resign, and thousands of midwives and members of the public signed a ‘Not in our name’ petition, demanding that she reverses the policy which ‘represents a disgraceful betrayal of her profession’.

Under the 1967 Abortion Act, women can abort an unborn baby up until 24 weeks’ gestation, with exceptions after that allowed on medical grounds.

But the BPAS’s ‘We Trust Women’ campaign – launched in February – proposes that ‘the abortion time limit be removed from criminal law’.

Critics fear such a radical change would lead to healthy foetuses being aborted late in pregnancy for the convenience of the mother or because they were the ‘wrong’ sex.

It also flies in the face of calls to actually tighten the 24-week cut-off following advances in medical science that mean more premature babies survive.

Last week, the RCM formally joined the campaign, saying it has the union’s ‘full support’ and adding: ‘The continued criminalisation of abortion in the UK may drive women to access abortion services which are neither safe nor legal.’

But midwives are in open revolt.

The British Pregnancy Advice Service 'We Trust Women' campaign document (pictured) states: 'The abortion time limit would be removed from criminal law. There is no doubt that abortions post viability raise particular moral concerns for many...but there is no evidence that [it] leads to an increase in later terminations'

Only a tiny proportion of abortions take place at 24 weeks or later: there were 211 such terminations in 2014

Judith Smyth, a midwife from Northern Ireland, said: ‘Anyone advocating allowing abortion up to birth, I think is so sad and tragic, but to have my own representative body coming out in support of this extreme view is very disappointing.

‘I know she’s our chief, but there is clearly a conflict of interest. On something as big as this, she should have consulted us.’

Labour MP Robert Flello said: ‘I am utterly and completely appalled by this abhorrent proposal. This wasn’t a minor policy shift by the Royal College of Midwives, it was a fundamental change and the reason they didn’t ask their members is because they knew they wouldn’t get it past them.

‘It is unacceptable that the RCM is led by someone so closely aligned to the biggest provider of abortions.’

Jim Shannon, a Democratic Unionist MP in Ulster, vowed to put down a question in Parliament this week.

It is unacceptable that the RCM is led by someone so closely aligned to the biggest provider of abortions Labour MP Robert Flello

He said: ‘I will ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions he has had, or will have, with the RCM and BPAS. My concern is that scrapping the 24-week cut-off would be absolutely disgraceful.

‘I would have thought the RCM should be protecting unborn life. Its chief executive has this dual position and many people would say you can’t have that.’

Professor Warwick was on a walking holiday yesterday but an RCM spokesman admitted she did not consult its members on the issue, saying: ‘The constitution allows for our members to elect the RCM board and for this body to set our strategic objectives.’

Anne Scanlan, of pro-life group Life Education, said: ‘This would legalise abortion-on-demand throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy, for any reason whatsoever. We know multitudes of midwives who will feel completely alienated and disenfranchised by this extreme and unnecessary move.

‘We are deeply disappointed in the Royal College of Midwives for adopting this extreme policy without any consultation with its members whatsoever.’

Left, The RCM Abortion Position Statement and right, The Royal College of Midwives badge. The college was established in 1881 with the Latin motto Vita Donum Dei, meaning ‘Life is the gift of God’

She said a survey in 2012 found that only 2 per cent of British women wanted the time limit increased beyond 24 weeks, while 59 per cent favoured a reduction in the time limit.

Sally Carson, a midwife from Chester, said: ‘Midwives are for delivering live babies wherever possible and trying to preserve the lives of those born prematurely. These babies are not tumours that they can just remove.’

Michelle Viney, a midwife of 15 years’ standing, added: ‘Why could the RCM think it could do this without asking any of their members? I find it so shocking.

'I financially support it, but I wouldn’t want to be paying a fee towards an organisation which is going to be campaigning for something which, morally, I 100 per cent disagree with.’

BPAS chief executive Ann Furedi (pictured), said abortion should be accepted as a form of family planning. She is married to sociology professor Frank Furedi, a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party

BPAS, which receives £25 million of public money to carry out 63,000 terminations a year on behalf of the NHS, is led by Ann Furedi, its £145,000-a-year chief executive.

She is a former Cosmopolitan journalist who once said abortion should be accepted ‘as an essential method of family planning’, and who is married to a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Professor Warwick became BPAS chairman in 2014, and has been a trustee for five years. Her BPAS position is unpaid, but she receives £155,000 a year for her RCM job.

Andrew Percy MP, a Conservative member of the Commons’ health select committee, said: ‘It is clearly a conflict of interest if she is doing the two roles. It’s pretty disgusting. She represents midwives, many of whom will absolutely not agree with this campaign, and she should think very hard about whether or not her position is sustainable.’

Dr Peter Saunders, head of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: ‘It is bitterly ironic that the RCM, the supposed champion of safe childbirth and antenatal care, should be backing a campaign seeking to legalise the killing of unborn children up until birth.

'It is even more extraordinary that their chief executive, who also chairs BPAS, should be spearheading this initiative without apparently even consulting her membership. It is an extraordinary abuse of power.’

James Mildred, of the campaign group Christian Action Research and Education, added: ‘What sort of message does the RCM’s radical stance on abortion send to pro-life midwives? It is tragic.’

Campaigners said that if Britain scrapped its abortion laws altogether, it would find itself in company with China, Vietnam and North Korea, which have no restrictions.

The RCM spokesman said: ‘If we are to be advocates for women then we must advocate for choice on all aspects of their care.

The RCM is not for or against abortion. It is for women, and respecting their choices about their bodies. NHS policy is explicit that high-quality maternity services include respecting women’s right to make reproductive choices. The RCM’s stance on decriminalisation of abortion is compatible with this.’

Guy Adams: Left-wing midwives' chief as arrogant and unaccountable as a Seventies union boss

Radical agenda: Cathy Warwick sparked a backlash from midwives

One morning last month, Britain’s 30,000-odd midwives woke up to a piece of shocking news: their entire professional future depends on Britain voting to remain in the EU.

That, at least, was the verdict of Cathy Warwick, the chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM).

In a hard-hitting statement, she claimed that ‘being in the EU underpins much of the protection that pregnant women receive’ and is ‘vital’ for the profession, arguing that the ‘economic shock’ of a Brexit vote is likely to severely damage the NHS.

Professor Warwick’s comments came as the RCM announced that it will be formally supporting the ‘Remain’ campaign – on the apparent grounds that, as she sees it, the nation’s midwives will all be ‘better off in’.

She was, of course, perfectly entitled to that opinion – though many in the ‘Leave’ camp strongly disagreed with her analysis.

Yet whether it might reflect the view of a majority of the RCM’s actual members, who each support the organisation to the tune of £244-a-year, was anyone’s guess.

Strangely, given the highly charged nature of the EU debate, Professor Warwick hadn’t bothered to ballot them democratically before deciding to take a side so publicly in this increasingly heated campaign.

Members were not even asked to decide if the Royal College, a professional organisation which supposedly exists to uphold standards of care and represent the career interests of midwives, ought to be in the business of becoming embroiled in such a partisan political controversy as the EU referendum debate.

It was a similar story yesterday, when it emerged that Professor Warwick’s RCM has decided to join forces with a motley crew of abortion activists and radical feminists by supporting a campaign to abolish legal limits on abortion.

Again, her members were not balloted on whether their organisation should support this highly controversial move. The College was unable last night to say whether the decision to endorse the ‘We Trust Women’ campaign had even been properly sanctioned by its nine-strong board of directors.

A spokesman said Professor Warwick was ‘in Scotland, her native country, for the weekend’ and couldn’t be contacted.

There was no answer at the £1.5 million home in Balham, South London, from which she commutes to the organisation’s well-appointed offices in Marylebone.

Little wonder that around 200 members of the RCM have already signed a letter to the board condemning the policy as ‘utterly unacceptable’ and stating that the Royal College of Midwives ‘does not speak in our name’.

To many, Professor Warwick, who is 63 and has been running the midwives’ organisation since 2008, is seeking, stealthily, to make her organisation pursue a Left-wing political agenda.

In doing so, she has at times behaved with the brand of arrogance and unaccountability you might expect to find in old-fashioned trade union power-broker.

Paid £155,000 a year – around five times the salary of a normal midwife – Professor Warwick certainly does not appear to have been entirely open about her formal links to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the pro-abortion charity running the ‘We Trust Women’ campaign.

The fact that she happens to be chairman of the BPAS’s board of trustees is strangely absent from the lengthy CV which she publishes on the Royal College’s website.

So too is her apparent support for the liberalisation of abortion law.

Perhaps that’s because her stance would appear to be entirely at odds with not just the view of many RCM members, but also with the traditional ethos of the College, which was founded in 1881 and has the Latin motto ‘Vita Donum Dei,’ meaning ‘Life is the Gift of God’.

Certainly in years gone by, the RCM was scrupulous about upholding the spirit of that motto. While generally supportive of the right of women to choose, within the confines of the law, it steered clear of advocating for British abortion law to be relaxed.

In the 1980s, it instead argued for the lowering of the abortion limit from 28 to 24 weeks, since medical advances meant foetuses were viable from an earlier age.

During the 1990s, the College was accused of siding with ‘anti-abortion fanatics’ by backing a ban on harvesting of ovarian material from dead foetuses.

Under the leadership of Professor Warwick, who is married with three grown-up children, recent years have seen creeping politicisation. The RCM’s members went on strike over pay in 2014, and last year joined a notorious TUC protest at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester which saw journalists and delegates spat on and barracked as they attempted to gain access to the event.

More recently, the College has vigorously supported the junior doctors’ strike.