Whose Choice Anyway

endless enquiries and projects - helped forge a brilliant young back-up team.

Alison has done much of the work in collecting letters and editing this book.

Apart from Sir Bernard Braine, my key supporters in the House have been MPs: Ken Hargreaves, Ann Widdecombe, Dale Campbell-Savours, Alan Amos, David Amess, Dame Jill Knight, Elizabeth Peacock, Nicholas Bennett, Patrick McLoughlin and Ann Winterton. Ken Hargreaves has been a staunch ally and friend, giving generously of his time.

Among my own parliamentary colleagues, opinion was divided. Alan Beith and Cyril Smith promised me their backing. When the vote came at Second Reading they were joined in the pro-life lobby by several other Liberal Democrat MPs: Simon Hughes, Alex Carlile, Ronnie Fearn and Charles Kennedy. Among colleagues, the greatest hostility came from Richard Livsey and Matthew Taylor.

Livsey appeared at a press conference where I was likened to Goebbels, the Nazi war criminal; and Taylor's office actively organised the Party's opposing group. Of course, the most predictable and formidable opposition came from David Steel, then Party leader, and author of the 1967 Abortion Act. During the summer months I had several conversations with David Steel and spent a few days with him and his wife, Judy, at their home in Ettrick Bridge. At no time did he try to use our friendship to try and dissuade me or to unfairly pressurise me; and although I regret one or two incidents in which he was involved in the later stages of the Bill, I am glad that we remain friends.

In 1967 I had profoundly disagreed with his Bill. When he stood for the leadership election in 1976 I voted for John Pardoe, and one of the reasons was David Steel's abortion legislation. After my own election to Parliament in 1979 we had many private arguments about the effects of his Act. In 1967 he had stressed that it was not the 'intention of the Bill to leave a wider door open for abortion on request'. He has always adamantly insisted that the 1967 Act does not allow for 'abortion on demand'. Even to this day he insists that there is not 'abortion on demand' in Britain. It is hard to square that with the facts: 172,000 abortions a year - 600 every working day - and, at 28 weeks, the highest upper time limit for abortions in Western Europe. In 1967 they said abortion would decrease illegitimacy; today it is 15% and rising. In 1967 they said abortion would end child abuse. That has a hollow ring today.

People have often asked me how it was possible for us to work so closely in the same Party. It is important to understand that the Liberal Party always regarded this as a conscience issue - and indeed many of us would have been forced to leave if it had been otherwise. David himself was one of the strongest voices in opposing those who, from time to time, tried to write abortion on demand into Party policy.

By contrast the Labour Party's avowal of abortion on demand as official policy and their refusal to allow individual MPs the right to vote according to their conscience