Let's be clear about this. Overpopulation in the sense that we don't have enough food to go around, is a myth. The problem is not that we don't have enough food to go around but that the people who are starving and go to bed hungry do not have the money to pay for it. The inherent anarchic capitalist system ensures that overproduction is a recurring theme in the history of this barbaric system. Food production far exceeds human reproduction. To argue that we need more abortion to offset potential starvation is therefore an insidious suggestion. I am in favour of abortion not on this spurious basis, but on the basis that its the right of the woman to be able to choose to do with her body as she sees fit.

A major debate on abortion took place in the British House of Commons yesterday (Monday 12 May). Amendments to our government's Human Fertilization and Embryology bill aims to limit women's access to abortion. Anti-abortionists argue that foetuses feel pain. But there is no evidence of this. Our government's Science and Technology Committee concluded that evidence "does not indicate that pain is consciously felt, especially not below the current upper gestational limit of abortion". A report in the British Medical Journal by Dr Stuart Derbyshire found that there is "good evidence" to show that foetuses do not feel pain, and that the neural circuitry for processing pain cannot be considered complete until 26 weeks. And the pyschological processes that make sense of pain are not developed until after this stage.

Anti-abortionists also argue that babies can now survive earlier due to advances in medical technology, so late abortions performed shouldn't be allowed. The evidence for this is problematic to say the least. The committee concuded that, "while survival rates at 24 weeks and over have improved they have not done so below the gestational point."

"Put another way, we have seen no good evidence to suggest that foetal viability has improved significantly since the abortion time limit was last set, and seen some good evidence to suggest that it has not."

Doctors have voted overwhelmingly to keep the current time limit. Up to 80 percent of members of the General Medical Council voted to keep the post-20 week abortions legal. So-called "late abortions" - those that take place after 20 weeks - are a focus for anti-abortionists because 83 percent of people in Britain support a woman's right to choose. So they hope to chip away at our rights gradually, and think that "late abortions" are an easy target. Their focus on this distorts the reality of abortion in Britain.

Late abortions are very rare - less than 1 percent of all abortions in Britain take place after 22 weeks. It is women in the most difficult circumstances that need them. Women access abortions because they need them. It is the woman, not some vague idea about the "unborn" that matters. A woman should not be forced to stay pregnant and give birth to a child against her will. We have to defeat the attack on abortion to show the bigots they cannot come back again and again to chip away at a womans right to choose. For more go to www.abortionrights.org.uk