A pro-life MP has expressed her support for a change to abortion laws, just as new figures reveal a major rise in terminations being carried out at a Kent clinic.

Marie Stopes International’s clinic in Brewer Street, Maidstone, terminated 4,667 foetuses in 2007 - a rise of 11 per cent on 2006.

The latest figures are food for thought for MPs about to vote in today’s debate on changes to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, which could see the limit of 24 weeks’ gestation for abortions decreased to 20 weeks or less.

Ann Widdecombe, Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald, is supporting the decrease, and said: "If you actually look at the abortion figures they are going up year on year.

“We have had seven million since 1967 and people are increasingly turning to abortion as retrospective contraception.

"We are now in a situation where we can abort children who are perfectly capable of being born alive and surviving."

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Miss Widdecombe said she personally would like the limit to be reduced way further to 12, 14 or 16 weeks.

"We also have to remember that there are two lives involved, not just the woman but that of the child.

“What does it say for our moral compass that you can have two children of exactly the same age and gestation, one is in a cot with all the resources of medical science being poured in to look after it and the other is being taken from the womb and the only difference between the two is that one can be seen and the other cannot?

“There is something deeply wrong with that."

Tony Kerridge, from Marie Stopes, said the figures did not necessarily mean more women were having abortions in the Maidstone area.

He said: "What these figures probably represent is Marie Stopes International being more successful in winning NHS contracts.

“The figures may look like a large rise, but it just means that more women are having their NHS terminations carried out at our clinics rather than in a hospital or other clinical setting."