A week after the appeal of the Catholic Primate Murphy-O’Connor, who had asked Catholics to oppose abortion in the campaign leading up to the general elections on 5 May and make sure that the parliamentary candidates for whom they vote are in favour of life, the archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England, has also expressed his position on the matter. Williams had been criticized in the British tabloid press for not having supported Murphy-O’Connor. In an article published in the ‘Sunday Times’ Rowan Williams declared, “it is worth thinking of a Commission that would consider a reduction of the minimum time limit for an abortion”. Williams, however, avoided openly supporting the Conservative leader Michael Howard, who had asked for the legal limit of abortion to be reduced from 24 to 20 weeks, or aligning himself with those in favour of the abolition of legal abortion. Following the intervention of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Jonathan Sachs, had also issued a statement on the matter. According to Sachs abortion is often used “as a mere convenience”, while the general secretary of the Council of Muslims in the UK, has declared that every civil society ought to be “seriously alarmed” by the number of abortions. According to a survey published in the ‘Sunday Express’, the majority of Britons more precisely 59% – are in favour of a reduction of the legal time limit within which abortion can be practised. Only 24% of those interviewed by the NOP polling agency are in favour of the maintenance of the current limit of 24 weeks of pregnancy.
