Abortion ethics
Sir: The dog-fight in your columns about the precise degree to which the BMA is willing for doctors to take social factors into account in abortion, is beginning to take on the character of a mediaeval disputation. Some interpret the 'mu's delphic utterances one way, some another. What is still totally obscure is how the BMA proposes to expel a doctor who is thought to have transgressed its ethical code, once it is agreed what it is. Dr Derek Stevenson, the BMA secretary, has confirmed in the KW (27 April) that 'it could act only if a complaint was lodged against a member.' But who would lodge a com- plaint against a doctor who had acted legally? The patient who had asked for an abortion? A medical colleague acting as temporary police- man? Or is the BMA setting up its own spy system? - The truth is, that whereas the law can be en- forced, ethical rulings cannot. They exist in the minds and hearts of individual doctors, or not at all. They cannot be imposed upon a reluctant profession by edict.
95 Court Road, London SE9 M. Vaughan
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