Anti-abortion movements

In Western Europe this has had the effect at once of both more closely regulating the use of abortion, and at the same time mediating and reducing the impact anti-abortion campaigns have had on the law.

[3] By 1975, Simone Veil, the minister for health, introduced legislation that specifically in cases of distress "tolerated" abortion up to ten weeks.

[4] Abortions after this date are only cleared by the government if the pregnancy endangers the health of the woman or will result in the birth of a child with a severe and incurable disease.

[3] There are several major anti-abortion groups in the Republic of Ireland, including Pro Life Campaign, Youth Defence and the Iona Institute.

[10] Parliament passed and President Dmitri Medvedev signed several restrictions on abortion into law to combat "a falling birthrate" and "plunging population".

Medvedev's wife Svetlana Medvedeva has taken up the anti-abortion cause in Russia in a weeklong national campaign against abortion called "Give Me Life!"

[10] In Spain, over one million demonstrators took part in a march in Madrid in October 2009 to protest plans by the government of José Luis Zapatero to legalize elective abortions and eliminate parental consent restrictions.

This is through two processes, known as "prayer vigils", which are sometimes quiet and other times said aloud to actively dissuade; and "pavement counseling", where activists approach women entering clinics in order to persuade them to continue with their pregnancies.

[15] Efrat activists primarily raise funds to relieve the "financial and social pressures" on pregnant women so that they will not terminate their pregnancies.

There is also a smaller consistent life ethic movement, favoring a philosophy which opposes all forms of killing, including abortion, war, euthanasia, and capital punishment.

The current movement is in part a continuation of previous debates on abortion that led to the practice being banned in all states by the late 19th century.

Quickening, which had previously been thought to be the point at which the soul entered a human was discovered to be a relatively unimportant step in fetal development, caused many medical professionals to rethink their positions on early term abortions.

[19] Ideologically, the Hippocratic Oath and the medical mentality of that age to defend the value of human life as an absolute also played a significant role in molding opinions about abortion.

[20] The "free love" wing of the feminist movement refused to advocate abortion and treated the practice as an example of the hideous extremes to which modern marriage was driving women.

[23] A Conservative MP, Cathay Wagantall, introduced a bill in 2020 seeking to ban abortions for the purpose of choosing a child's sex.