The 1967 Abortion Act fifty years on: Abortion, medical authority and the law revisited

The recent 50th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act provides the opportunity to revisit what has been termed the ‘remarkable authority’ this Act ascribes to doctors. This paper does so using as its starting point a seminal commentary on this question by the renowned medical sociologist Sally Macintyre, published in this journal in 1973 as ‘The Medical Profession and the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain’. We revisit themes from that paper through an analysis of the findings of interviews with 14 doctors who, throughout lengthy careers, have provided abortions and led the development of the abortion service in England and Wales. We contrast our findings with Macintyre’s, and argue that our interviews highlight the shifting meaning of medical authority and medical professionalism. We show that those doctors most involved in providing abortions place moral value on this work; uphold the authority of women (not doctors) in abortion decision-making; view nurses and midwives as professional collaborators; and consider their professional and clinical judgement impeded by the present law. We conclude that medical sociologists have much to gain by taking abortion provision as a focus for the further exploration of the shifting meaning of medical authority