Portrait of the Week – 26 March 2005

Private Johnson Beharry, 25, was awarded the Victoria Cross for valour on 1 May 2004 during an incident in Iraq. The government admitted that Camilla Parker Bowles would become Queen if she was married to the Prince of Wales when he became King. Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said he would give parliamentary time if he were prime minister to a Bill to reduce the upper limit for abortion from 24 to 20 weeks. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, said, ‘The policy supported by Mr Howard is one that we would also commend, on the way to a full abandonment of abortion.’ Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said it should not be an election issue. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said there was ‘more and more of a shared unhappiness and bewilderment around our law and its effects’. West Mercia Crown Prosecution Service announced that no prosecution would be pursued in the case of a late abortion in 2001 of a child with a cleft palate that had been brought for judicial review by the Revd Joanna Jepson.