TNAG-0977-FCO40-1196-Legislation-for-the-abortion-law-in-Hong-Kong-1980 — Page 1

MEMORANDUM FOR EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

ERSON

OFFENCES AGAINST THE PERSON (AMENDMENT) BILL 1980

UNDESIRABLE MEDICAL ADVERTISEMENTS

(AMENDMENT) BILL 1980

PAJ 16.4.

On 25th October 1977, after considering memorandum XCR(77)277

on the Report of the Working Group on the Law relating to Abortion (copy at Annex A), Members advised and the Governor ordered:

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(a) that there should be an irrebuttable presumption, in the

case of a girl under 17, that the continuance of pregnancy would involve a greater risk to the physical or mental health of the girl than if the pregnancy were terminated, though it would be open to the doctor to refuse to carry out such an abortion if the latter were likely to involve a serious physical risk to the patient;

(b) that the recommendation that women over 40 should be

enabled to obtain abortion on demand should not be adopted;

(c) that "deformity" in the last line of paragraph 12 and in

paragraph 18(g) of the memorandum should be deleted and replaced by "abnormality";

(d) that the last sentence of paragraph 22 of the memorandum

should be deleted;

(e) that, subject to the foregoing, proposals (a), (c)-(e) and (g)-(j) of paragraph 18 of the memorandum should be adopted;

(f) that, subject to the foregoing, a draft bill to amend the

law in relation to abortion should be submitted to the Executive Council;

(g) that the Report should not be made public; and

(h) that there should be no consultations with outside persons

and no publicity before the draft bill had been considered by the Council.

In addition to compliance with the above instructions, the opportunity has been taken to include the following amendments to the Offences Against the Person Ordinance (Chapter 212):

CONFIDENTIAL

機密