According to a new poll one out of three GPs would refuse to work in a surgery that offered abortions and 61 % of GPs said they did not believe practices should be offering abortions at all.

Dr Trevor Stammers, chairman of the Christian Medical Fellowship said, 'Medical abortions are not a harmless procedure. GPs should rightly be reluctant to take on the risk.'

In the survey 49% of the 480 doctors wanted a cut in the current 24 week time limit for abortion with 11 % wanting it to be lowered to 15 weeks or less. 48 % believed the 24 week limit should remain and 3 % felt it should be increased to 26 weeks or more.

75 % of the GPs did not want the regulation of two doctors being required to sign a form before an abortion could be performed replaced with one that required only one signature while 61 % of the GPs were of the opinion that practices should not be offering any abortions at all.

Polyclinics and GP surgeries having been working towards offering women more access to abortions and the Government has been finding ways to make it easier for women who were less than nine weeks pregnant to be able to access abortion facilities.

The procedure is known as early medical abortion (EMA) involves two trips to a clinic, hours or a day apart, to take pills which induce miscarriage. EMA providers have been calling for women to be allowed to take the second pill at home after receiving medical instructions.

EMAs are already offered in one GP surgery and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service has approval for another one although many GPs are against the move. According to the GP Newspaper survey 56 % of GPs are of the opinion that this would lead to an increase in the number of abortions.

Dr Sarah Jarvis, of the Royal College of GPs, felt if widely available in GP surgeries and clinics, abortion would be trivialised.  Ann Furedi, chief executive of the Advisory Service said, 'There's no doubt about it. Where abortions are legal, the earlier it can be provided the better.'