Tessa Jowell has requested meeting

Jowell: don't trivialise abortion

Jowell Accuses Charity of Trivialising Women's Feelings

But Dr Tim Black, the charity's chief executive, has described the terminations costing £285 as "a new seamless service without medical drama or moral censure".

He said abortion had been made legal in Britain 30 years ago: "Why 30 years later is there this preoccupation of making women have to climb over fences and do back-flips and censure them, if they want to have an abortion and it conforms to the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act?"

He said, it amounted to "a quantum leap in service delivery".

Marie Stopes International plan to offer the service at clinics in London, Leeds and Manchester from next month. It would be offered to women less than twelve weeks pregnant to fit in with their busy working lives.

But anti-abortion campaigners are calling for an investigation into the so-called walk-in termination service. A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops' Conference said: "We are talking now about making abortion available rather like something you buy over the counter and that means people do not have a chance to consider seriously what they are doing."

Jack Scarisbrick, chairman of the anti-abortion charity, Life, said: "This is bad news for the poor children who are going to be killed and also bad news for women because every abortion violates women. Post abortion trauma is becoming a major women's disease when they try to come to terms with the guilt, grief and anger at the loss of life."

The Archbishop of Westminster and the leader of English and Welsh Catholics Cardinal Basil Hume said of the Marie Stopes initiative: "In the light of reports I have read, it seems to me that a decision about human life and death is increasingly becoming a matter of trivial and routine choice."

But some MPs are prepared to back the scheme. David Wilshire, Tory MP for Spelthorne, said: "If one takes the view that abortion is acceptable and you want one, it is taking the decision that is difficult. Having taken the decision, anything that reduces the physical trauma of it I think I am in favour of. If abortion is evil, whether it takes two hours or two minutes, an abortion remains evil. I do not think it is an absolute."

In and Out in Ten Minutes?

At present 160,000 women have terminations every year in Britain. The new service will aim to be as non-intrusive as possible with women sedated under local anaesthetic. The technique involves the minimal dilation of the cervix and is carried out using a method known as vacuum aspiration.