Father fails in attempt to stop girlfriend's abortion

The British Court of Appeal turned down an Oxford student's request for an injunction to stop his pregnant former girlfriend from going ahead with a planned abortion. The father's application for a hearing by the House of Lords was then rejected by three law lords. Dyer describes an earlier case, Paton v. British Pregnancy Advisory Service, in which a judge held that a husband had no right to stop his wife from having an abortion. In the current case, however, the Court of Appeal's and law lords' decisions were based on the finding that the fetus was so underdeveloped that it would be unable to breathe either naturally or through a ventilator and was therefore not capable of being born alive. The effect of the Court of Appeals's ruling is to equate the words "capable of being born alive" in the 1929 Infant Life (Preservation) Act with viability, although the meaning of viability has not yet been clearly defined.