This paper focuses on the case of Crowter, which challenges the provision of abortion on the basis of a 'substantial risk' of 'serious handicap' in a future child. It situates the case within the long and contested biography of the Abortion Act 1967, using it as a basis for reconsidering this flawed and ageing statute. It argues that the legal arguments made in Crowter refract important moral and political concerns with disability rights through a wider anti-abortion sensibility, thereby translating them into legal remedies that would offer a response that is simultaneously disproportionate and insufficient. Achieving a proper legal and policy response to modern ethical values regarding equality, diversity and inclusion will require more radical reform of abortion law, which should refuse an opposition between the rights of women and disabled people in favour of treating them as ‘mutually reinforcing concepts’.