Andrea Williams

The vast majority of women believe that abortion is "cruel" and that the existing law should be changed, according to the biggest ever professional survey of female opinion.

The survey also shows that most people - men and women - believe that too many abortions are being carried out each year and want to see the 200,000 a year toll reduced.

Another key finding is that women overwhelmingly want Government money spent on charities offering alternatives to abortion, such as adoption. Eighty five per cent want to see more help given to women who want to keep their baby rather than further moves to make abortion easier.

The poll, carried out by CommunicateResearch for the campaigning group Choose Life, will add to the mounting pressure for a change in the abortion law and a reduction in the current upper limit.

But the poll suggests that women will not be satisfied with a simple reduction in the upper time limit of 24 weeks if that simply results in an increase in early abortions. Most want to see fewer terminations overall and wider availability of alternatives to abortion.

Tory leader David Cameron and his predecessor Michael Howard have both backed calls for a lower limit and the leader of Britain's Roman Catholics Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor is to meet Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt to press for a tightening of the law.

Professor Casey said: "For years abortion has been cast as a central tenet of feminism and as essential to women's empowerment. But recent developments in pro-life feminism give the lie to this thesis and abortion has devastating effects on the psychological well-being of many women.

"There have been several influential studies published recently that show an increased risk for psychiatric disorder and psychiatric hospitalisation among women who have abortions.

"So, contrary to the early feminist rhetoric promoting abortion as a positive choice for women with crisis pregnancies, women deserve better and we cannot and should not act as oppressors of our unborn children as we were once oppressed by the structures within society. "

Andrea Williams, public policy officer for the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship, said: "This poll confirms that women in this country are deeply unhappy with the existing abortion laws and want them tightened up. It also suggests many women fear that too often abortions are carried out because of social pressures and not because the women concerned want a termination. Above all women want to see fewer abortions in this country. It would be disastrous if the move towards a lower time limit for abortion were to lead to more early abortions. That would achieve very little"

The latest survey reveals mounting disquiet among women at the scale of abortions in Britain and the laxity of the existing law. It is based on interviews with 1046 women and 457 men.

The key findings are:

• More than eight in ten women believe that aborting a baby at the current upper age limit is cruel.
• A massive 95 per cent of Britons agree that the abortion law should be kept under regular review and fewer than one in twenty disagrees.