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In England and Wales we recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Abortion Act 1967, an Act described as a “great gift of choice from that Parliament to the women of Britain” 1 As I will demonstrate in this chapter, there is nothing about the Abortion Act that justifies such a label, rather than facilitating women’s choices, it entrenches medical dominance, rendering women supplicants, able only to request an abortion whilst preserving the gate-keeping function of the medical profession. Profound differences characterise the law regulating abortion in the United States of America, Germany and England & Wales, but one fact unites them all–none should be taken at face value, in each case the rhetoric does not match the regulatory reality it claims to describe! The English Abortion Act purports to regulate abortion strictly, but renders early abortion a matter of medical discretion and is generously funded by the …