Health Minister David Ashford has pledged his department will be ready when abortion reform takes effect later this year.

Dr Alex Allinson’s Abortion Reform Bill is set to become law before Christmas, after undergoing forensic levels of scrutiny during the first part of this year.

In terms of the public authorities, it will be the Department of Health and Social Care that will be most affected by the law changes, which will see a much less restrictive regime in place.

Mr Ashford said: ’The main impact on the department will be the counselling service.

’The department is geared up and I believe there is capacity already within the counselling service.’

Under the new law, all women seeking an abortion must be offered the opportunity of receiving counselling, but it will not be compulsory.

Mr Ashford said that counsellors in the family planning service were already trained to advise in this area.

GPs were also equipped to help patients seeking an abortion, he said, and to direct them to the right kind of counselling.

Before the Abortion Reform Bill can become law, the House of Keys will have to approve a number of largely technical amendments made by the Legislative Council - but procedures will not allow MHKs to reconsider those parts of the bill that have not been changed, which should preclude many of the previous debates being revisited, such as the different grounds for allowing a termination to take place.

If those amendments go through as expected, the bill could be ready to go to Tynwald for signature in November and, once that happens, it can be sent for royal assent and become law.

Once that happens, abortion will be permitted upon request up to 14 weeks, under specified circumstances including ’serious social grounds’ during the 15-24-week period, and in certain emergency or serious situations after 24 weeks.

Provision has also been added to create ’access zones’ around medical centres to protect women and medics from harassment.

Mr Ashford said he had not been convinced, initially, of the need to create such access zones, but his mind was changed by the antics of some of the more extreme anti-abortion protestors, such as Abort67, which used graphic images in public places.

’If Abort67 has proven anything to me, they proved why we need access zones,’ he said.

Noble’s Hospital will have an access zone created around it, but Mr Ashford said he hoped that would be the only one that was required and that GPs surgeries would not be targeted by protestors.

’If people act sensibly on both sides of the debate then hopefully there will never need to be any other access zones.’

Under the Manx law as it currently stands, a termination is allowed in the island up to 24 weeks, but only where medical practitioners consider there is substantial risk the child will not survive birth, will die shortly afterwards or will be seriously handicapped.

Pregnancies resulting from rape, incest or sexual assault may be terminated up to 12 weeks, but women must provide an affidavit attesting to the cause of the pregnancy.

Terminations on social grounds are not permitted under the current law.

Campaigners argued that, under the current law, hundreds of women had been forced to either travel to England for a procedure or risk obtaining abortion pills via the internet.