R v Bourne [1938] was a landmark case for defining grounds for abortion and therefore extending its legal availability to more women. The case under scrutiny – a termination performed on a girl of 14 who had been gang-raped – was chosen to arouse humanitarian sympathy but the surgeon, Aleck Bourne, was determined to argue it on clinical grounds of physical and mental health. Summing up for the jury from the bench, Mr Justice Macnaghten stated:
if the doctor is of opinion on reasonable grounds, on adequate knowledge, that the probable consequences of the continuance of pregnancy would indeed make the woman a physical wreck or a mental wreck, then he operates, in that honest belief, ‘for the purpose only of preserving the life of the mother’.
He continued that ‘The unborn child must not be destroyed except for the purpose of preserving the yet more precious life of the mother’. The jury returned a Not Guilty verdict in under an hour.