ABSTRACT
Providing continuity with the discourses of the nineteenth century, the woman of the parliamentarian imagination - selfless, wearied, at the centre of the family - was clearly located within a traditional narrative of gender. This chapter examines the woman emerging from the opponents' discourse. Introducing the degree to which biomedical arguments were to be deployed, David Alton contextualized his Bill as necessitated by 'the gigantic strides in medicine and technology' that had occurred since the passage of the Abortion Act. The Abortion Act accepts and employs many of the tales and judgments that are explicit and implicit within the discourses of both proponent and opponent. It corporatizes and in so doing it becomes part of the fiction: a new 'technique' of telling the story. The Abortion Act 1967 is located not only within a medical model but also within a presumption of criminality. Section 58 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 asserts the illegality of abortion.
