LYNNE KELLY was finally able to have her abortion on May 29, but the horrendous way she was dragged through the courts by her estranged husband stands as a stark reminder of how fragile women's abortion rights are in Britain today.
OK, so the courts agreed that Lynne had the right to decide under the 1967 Act but this did not stop a situation where the pregnancy has been forcibly extended for weeks including by court rulings.
During these weeks, despite the 1967 Act, Lynne Kelly's body has not been her own. This is a barbaric state of affairs - and yet this case is far from the first in Britain in recent years where a man has used to courts to try to prevent a woman having an abortion.
Yet I heard no Labour MPs -not even Labour women MPs -and no trade union leaders protesting that something must be done and quickly to prevent such situations every happening again.
While James Kelly eventually backed down, it is impossible to quantify the amount of distress his actions have caused to Lynne. At one point it seemed that she felt unable to go through with the abortion as she appeared to have been told that she would have to go through induced labour in order to terminate the pregnancy.
In reporting the fact that the abortion had taken place, The Guardian (May 31) commented "She was fourteen weeks pregnant.
The foetus had reached the limit when a simple abortion was no longer possible".
This statement and others likeit are a distortion of reality - and one that puts many women who for whatever reason have been unable to get an early abortion through needless agony.
I know - because I had an abortion at 22 weeks - and didn't in the end have to go through labour. My nightmare started not when I diswants to be late. covered I was pregnant but after a day care clinic threw me out when I was in bed waiting for a pre-med because they didn't have the apparatus to deal with the fact that I had asthma - not something they had bothered to ask me about in the six weeks I had been waiting for an appointment.
I was twelve weeks pregnant. I had expected a simple operation. I had, it's true being acutely conscious of the changes my body was going through since pretty much day one of the pregnancy. But I had no doubts about what I had decided - just a wish to get it over as quickly as possible and get on with my life.
These plans came to a sudden full stop that day in the Liverpool clinic. But worse was to come as when I approached my doctor to try for a NHS abortion - where I had been informed the necessary equipment would be available - I was told that by the time I was likely to get to the top of the waiting list I would be 16 weeks pregnant and would have to be induced.
I don't think I can describe how I felt. I knew that I didn't want a child then - but I did want children in the future. I certainly wasn't able to face the prospect of labour in that situation.
I felt completely powerless. In my silent panic I did nothing for weeks, not knowing where to turn. I was fortunate in the end to muster the strength to talk with a friend who worked as a volunteer for an abortion counselling service - and discovered that they did late abortions without necessarily insisting on inductions.
They were not able to promise I would not need to be induced.
That decision could only be made on medical grounds when I actually had the operation and was dependent both on the precise development of the foetus and of my body.
However they were supportive enough to give me back the self confidence I had been robbed of in the previous weeks. I was lucky enough to be able to get away with a D&C rather than the horrors I had feared.
The memories of those weeks have come back to me very powerfully as I have followed Lynne Kelly's tragedy.
My anger at the way I was treated by a supposedly supportive