The Abortion Act 1967 sought to cla

The Abortion Act 1967 sought to clarify the law. Introduced by David Steel and subject to heated debate it allowed for legal abortion on a number of grounds, with the added protection of free provision through the National Health Service. The Act was passed on 27 October 1967 and came into effect on 27 April 1968.[49]

The Act provided a defence for Doctors performing an abortion on any of the following grounds:

To save the woman's life
To prevent grave permanent injury to the woman's physical or mental health
Under 28 weeks to avoid injury to the physical or mental health of the woman
Under 28 weeks to avoid injury to the physical or mental health of the existing child(ren)
If the child was likely to be severely physically or mentally handicapped
Before the Human Fertillisation and Embryology Act 1990 amended the Act, the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929 acted as a buffer to the Abortion Act 1967. This meant that abortions could not be carried out if the child was "capable of being born alive". There was therefore no statutory limit put into the Abortion Act 1967, the limit being that which the courts decided as the time at which a child could be born alive. The C v S case in 1987 reconfirmed that at 19–22 weeks a foetus was not capable of being born alive.[44]

The Act required that the procedure must be certified by two doctors before being performed.

The Act was amended in 1990 by the Human Fertillisation and Embryology Act 1990. The effect was that the Infant Life Preservation Act was decoupled from the Abortion Act thus allowing abortion to full term for disability, life of the mother and health of the mother. Some Members of Parliament claimed not to have been aware of the vast change the decoupling of the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929 would have on the Abortion Act 1967, particularly in relation to the unborn disabled child.[50] There was a failed attempt to revisit the amendment and have it overturned.[51]