CANBERRA - A push by church leaders to limit access to late-term abortions in Australia split the conservative government on Wednesday, prompting Prime Minister John Howard to call for calm on the issue.

Senior government coalition Liberal and National party politicians openly criticized each other after Nationals Senate leader Ron Boswell went public to back the church campaign.

A statement from the leaders of 12 churches, including the Anglican, Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches, as well as leaders of the Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu communities, has been sent to Howard and all state leaders.

They want more accurate data on abortions in Australia, a seven-day cooling-off period before an abortion, and a ban on late-term abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Abortions have been legal across Australia since the 1970s, but laws vary across each of the six states and two territories.

Latest figures show the Australian government subsidised up to 89,000 abortions a year, although that number included clinical procedures following stillbirths and miscarriages. More than 70,000 were in the first weeks of a pregnancy.

Boswell angered some of his colleagues by backing the church leaders and seeking government data to be used to back their anti-abortion campaign.

"So many different figures have been used and claims made in the recent public debate on abortion that I've asked the minister for the latest data so we can be sure of the basic facts," Boswell said.

Government Senate Whip Jeannie Ferris said Boswell's intervention had sparked an angry backlash from female MPs across all political parties.

"They have said to me, we don't need this debate, we don't want this debate," Ferris told Reuters.

Former health minister and doctor Brendan Nelson also played down any need to change abortion laws, and said he did not want a return to a time when illegal abortions were common.

"The last thing that we want to do I think is to move further away from the laws that govern abortions today," Nelson told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio

Howard allowed the abortion debate to run briefly after last October's election when Health Minister Tony Abbott, a close friend of Australia's Catholic Cardinal George Pell, described the number of abortions as a national tragedy.

However, Howard told reporters in Singapore the government had no plans to sponsor any new abortion laws, and he urged his MPs, senators and the media not to overreact.