As MPs prepare to vote on cutting the time limit for abortions, the Daily Mail says the current system “shames our nation”.

Foetuses are being aborted at a late stage in their development when they would have had a good chance of survival outside the womb, the Mail says in an editorial.

“An attack on women? Utter nonsense. The campaign to cut the time-limit is an attack on an everyday practice that shames our nation,” it says.

Rubbish, says Times columnist David Aaronovitch.

There is no significant evidence to support the claim that the foetus is more viable at up to 24 weeks than in 1967 or 1990 when the law was last changed.

“If viability isn’t the test - as it was claimed to be back in 1990 when the limit was reduced from 28 weeks - then the judgment must be that some folk simply don’t like abortions and wish to restrict them as much as possible,” he writes.

There is little doubt that the “temperature of the debate about abortion” has changed in recent times, says the Independent.

“The introduction of 4-D ultrasound techniques, showing foetuses of just 12 weeks with apparent facial expressions, has dramatised the debate,” it says in an editorial. “So have couples coming back from hospital and proudly showing off photos of their baby at its 12-week scan.”

But there is an even more pressing matter than the upper time limit for abortions, according to a Daily Telegraph editorial.

It says that only a small number of terminations take place at more than 22 weeks. However, there are 200,000 abortions in Britain each year at 12 weeks or less.

“Governments routinely launch campaigns telling us not to drink, smoke, take drugs or eat to excess; yet there is no sense of a similar effort being expended on advising women about the medical and psychological trauma of abortion,” the paper says.

Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley says the debates over abortion and research on embryos highlight a wider divide between the two main political parties.

She argues that there is a real difference between a progressive, pro-science Labour government and a backward-looking, “finger-wagging” Conservative opposition.

“If the reactionary arguments are successful, throwing out vital medical advances and criminalising frightened, often young, women, then it will mark a real turning point,” she writes.

“Whatever you think of the New Labour years, it has been a decade of social liberalism, when racism, homophobia and anti-science voodoo became steadily less respectable.”

The Daily Mirror is alone among the papers in giving unqualified praise to Chancellor Alistair Darling’s 2.7 billion pound solution to the damaging 10p tax row.

“Once critical Labour MPs hailed it as a masterstroke,” the paper said. “Hopefully it signals the start of a concerted fightback by a prime minister who has been on the ropes for months.”

The Daily Mail says the original decision to scrap the starting 10p rate of tax was “A mistake, yes… but fatal? Hardly.” It says Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown “deserve credit for choosing the right means to help those who suffered,” by raising the tax threshhold.

But the Chancellor might want to avoid the rest of the dailies, especially the one printed on pink paper. Darling’s tax announcement “ has shattered any residual idea that Mr Brown’s administration can run an orderly fiscal policy,” says the Financial Times.

The paper concedes that “in policy terms, the plan to put up personal allowances makes sense.” However, it adds that the political cost is heavy — the government will no longer now be able to attack the Conservatives over unfunded promises of tax cuts. “This is a significant weakening of the election campaign armoury,” it says.

The Daily Telegraph, somewhat grudgingly, saying that the Chancellor “deserves congratulations” for doing precisely what the paper had urged last Friday. But it adds that Darling’s statement was “a purely political damage-limitation exercise”, timed “to save Labour’s bacon” in next week’s Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

On a similar theme, the Times suggests that the late MP Gwyneth Dunwoody’s final service to the Labour Party has been in death rather than life. “It’s hard to believe that Alistair Darling would have made the statement he did on the 10p tax rate yesterday if it were not for fear of a massive defeat” in Crewe next week, Dunwoody’s former seat.

The paper calculates that the 2.7 billion pound price is the approximate equivalent of cutting the basic rate of income tax by 1p in the pound.

The Guardian notes that Darling effectively announced an emergency budget that “gave more money away than any real budget since 2001.”

The Independent says the 10p tax saga has been “an object lesson in bad government“. “What began as a cynical attempt to curry favour with the middle-classes has backfired in the most explosive manner,” it says. The Daily Express agrees it is “no way to run a country“.

The Sun asks who will be picking up the tab for the change. Unless Darling raises the money elsewhere, it draws the inevitable conclusion –”We will all pay more tax“.

The papers are nearly all agreed that Chancellor Alistair Darling’s 2.7 billion pound fix for the 10p tax row is the day’s main story.

“Darling seeks end to 10p tax backlash” reports the Financial Times, noting that the move will still leave 1.1 million poorer households worse off following the abolition of the lowest tax band in last year’s budget.

For the Daily Mail the tax giveaway is a “2.7 billion pound gamble” to appease fury on the Labour backbenches over the scrapping of the 10p starting rate.

But the papers also find room for other stories: Drivers face a 185 pound tax to park at work, says the Daily Telegraph of a government push to cut traffic congestion. The paper reports that Nottingham city council will be the first to introduce the “workplace parking levy as an alternative to road pricing.

The Sun reports that Yorkshire ripper Peter Sutcliffe is making a legal bid for freedom from the secure Broadmoor hospital, claiming his human rights have been breached. It says Sutcliffe, jailed in 1981 for killing 13 women, wants to be declared sane and given a release date.

The Independent opts for an analytic lead, suggesting that “Britain could once again be haunted by the spectre of stagflation“. It says a combination of stagnant output and high inflation not seen for decades will dog policymakers for months if not years to come.

By contrast the Daily Express says there is “Now a race to cut prices“, reporting that supermarkets Asda and Tesco and mortgage lender Nationwide have all unveiled plans for a host of cost-cutting deals to help “Britain’s hard-pressed families.”

The Times publishes a revealing photo of Housing Minster Caroline Flint — exposing her briefing notes on the state of the housing market as she walked to a cabinet meeting. “Safe as houses? Not this minister’s private papers” runs the headline over the picture. You can see a magnified image of the notes themselves on the front of the Telegraph.

The Guardian reports that Spain is being forced to ship drinking water to Barcelona to cope with the effects of the worst drought in the country since records began 60 years ago.

The Daily Mirror leads with the arrest of a 19-year-old man over the weekend murder of 16-year-old Jimmy Mizen in a southeast London bakers, while the Daily Star says police are following a reported sighting of missing Madeleine McCann on a flight to Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Commentators are revelling in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s effusive praise of Britain and drooling over the fashion sense of his wife but several see stormier waters ahead — specifically in the second half of the year from July when France takes over the presidency of the European Union.

Leader writers see problems in the two countries’ approach to Europe, particularly over France’s desire for closer European defence co-operation and a permanent EU president.

“The excitement generated by the Sarkozys’ visit will soon give way to prosaic confirmation of the old divides,” was the Daily Telegraph’s opinion.

“Gordon Brown is decidedly cool towards the EU and he could soon find himself at odds with a man who has an extremely ambitious agenda for the French presidency,” it added.

The Independent took a similar line, despite underlining the similarity between the domestic political positions of the two leaders.

Both, it noted, were men who had spent their entire lives working towards the top job but having reached the peak, now find themselves falling out of favour with their electorates.

“In that respect (Thursday’s) meeting could be an occasion for two drunks to prop each other up,” the paper said.

“They are leaders with fading home support in need of some foreign successes to imbue them with the role of statesmen,” it added.

The papers were united in welcoming Sarkozy’s lavish praise for Britain, the Anglo-Saxon economic model and the help London had given Paris during the past century.

What a contrast!

They contrasted the warm sentiments with the frosty relations between the two leaders’ predecessors, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac who fell out, primarily over Iraq.

“Enthusiastic overtures from a French president are hardly unwelcome in Britain, even if an immediate use for them is unclear,” said The Times. “The problem is that what he appears to envisage goes not just beyond what Britain wants, but what he can deliver.”

How, for example, the paper said, would Sarkozy’s hints about bringing France back into NATO’s chain of command after its 42-year absence, square with his idea of an EU army?

The Financial Times noted a wealth of issues continued to threaten Anglo-French relations, not least the Common Agricultural Policy, immigration controls, Britain’s EU budget rebate, mad cow disease and Iraq.

“The history of Anglo-French relations is littered with grand promises of fresh starts that quickly turn mouldy,” it observed.

“That said, (Sarkozy’s) seemingly heartfelt appeal to upgrade the ‘entente cordiale’ to an ‘entente amicale’ is both welcome and timely.”

And “le bling?”

One thing all the papers agreed on was the assured fashion sense of Sarkozy’s new wife, former supermodel Carla Bruni.

Under the headline “French Dressing,” The Independent, like many other papers, ran a picture gallery of the new First Lady of France, concentrating on the demure grey outfit she wore on arrival at Heathrow.

The reader could be forgiven for thinking one of three things about that ensemble, it said.

“That she had swapped outfits with an air hostess on board, that she had spent weeks studying pictures of Jackie Kennedy and the classic pillbox (hat), or she had renounced being the president’s wife and had taken holy orders. Or possibly all three.”