±«Óãtv

Three cabinet ministers voted yesterday to ban research on hybrid (human-animal) embryos: Des Browne, Ruth Kelly and Paul Murphy. All three are committed Catholics and have made their views known previously on what they see as an attack on the sanctity of the embryo. The Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward, was one of three cabinet ministers who did not vote in the division (David Miliband and Hilary Benn were the others). Opponents of the new research .

The debate today in Parliament moves to the vexed issue of . At present, the legal limit for abortions is fixed at 24 weeks, the supposed point at which a foetus is said to be "viable". Viability is not simply a biologically determined point at which a child can survive removal from the uterus; it is also a technologically constrained point: with advances in medical technology, we are seeing more foetuses survive birth or removal from the uterus at earlier points. Some neo-natal specialists have reported survivals a week or two earlier than the current limit, and this has encouraged some anti-abortion campaigners to push for a lowering of the legal limit from 24 weeks to 20 weeks. The government is opposing an amendment to that effect (whilst granting a free vote on the issue), and I suspect that this vote will be much closer than yesterday's hybrid division.

, published earlier this month in the British Medical Journal, concludes that babies born at 24 and 25 weeks have greatly improved survival rates, but the survival rates of those born at 23 weeks or less have not risen. That kind of research will encourage many MPs to maintain the current 24 week limit, especially since doctors report that the 20 week scan is often very significant in identifying severe abnormalities. A reduction in the time limit to 20 weeks, as envisaged in today's amendment, would mean that a woman could not opt for a termination after discovering that the foetus she is carrying has a serious abnormality.

MPs last voted on cutting time limits in 1990, with the passage of the earlier Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.

Incidentally, the same section of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill being debated today could also be amended to extend Great Britain's abortion law to Northern Ireland, but, as yet, no amendment to that effect has been tabled. The Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris has already indicated that he may bring such an amendment; we wait to see whether he will do so at this stage or later.