Analysis provided by: Soraya Pascoe, Legal Expert on Gender.

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a potential life sentence. This has been modified in 1945 to allow abortion of the 28th week of pregnancy where the intervention is to save the mother. While there is no codified constitutional right to equal access to healthcare, it is an accepted principle that men and women are accorded equal rights to healthcare by the State provisions in the National Health Service. Also within the practice of the Health Service and again not specifically legislated, a woman has a right to be seen by a female medical practitioner for intimate or gynaecological health problems.

Access to infertility treatment on public health funding (The National Health Service) is unequal and depends on where the prospective parent lives within the UK. Health authorities vary from region to region and criteria likewise depends on that given health authority. For example maximum age limits can vary from 34-43 years. Some health authorities stipulate that a woman must be married before receiving treatment. The reason for this variation is that the Government has allowed regional health authorities to rationalise their budget spending according to local needs and unlike basic women's services such as free contraception and a right to state assistance during pregnancy and child birth, the UK does not consider that there is a right to reproduction for whether heterosexual or for homosexual parents.

Despite the law against sex with girls under the age of 16, (as far as the consensual age for sex is concerned, it remains at 16 for a female and under that age it is an offence for the male party only to have sex with a female under the age of 16 or 17 in Northern Ireland, the age consent there), it is lawful in the United Kingdom for doctors to provide contraceptive advice and treatment to girls under 16 (17 in Northern Ireland). This must be conducted including and according to the girl's ability to understand advice, her sexual proclivity and her best interests. These criteria also applied to other treatment including abortion.

There are also independent clinics funded by the government and or by charitable sources which provide contraception, sexual health treatment and abortion, on a free basis to under 18 year olds.

Abortion is legal in the United Kingdom following the enactment of the Abortion Act 1967. Although the provisions limits legal abortion to the circumstance where the child or pregnant woman would otherwise suffer risk to physical or mental health and in particular that termination is necessary to preventpermanentgrave injury, physical or mental to the pregnant woman. (emphasis added for clarification). In practise this is interpreted widely so as to allow abortion within the legal limit of 24 weeks for a wide variety of reasons.

This is not the case in Northern Ireland where abortion is outlawed by the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act with which there is This leaves open the possibility of abortions during the first 27 weeks at the discretion of a doctor on the basis of preserving the life of the mother. Doctors in northern Ireland however are at risk of falling foul of the law. An exception to the Northern Ireland abortion law is when a woman has been raped although the 1981 Criminal Enquiries ( Northern Ireland) Order offers

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