21 AUGUST 1982, Page 18

Sir: Richard West (`No third world feminists', 7 August) may

well be right that pampered Western feminists are naive and imperialist when they try to foist their views on the third world. But isn't he being a little pampered himself when he cosily dismisses the question of abortion on the grounds that these are 'societies where children are loved and prized'? He obviously never met the haggard young African woman I saw recently at a Tanzanian maternity clinic: when asked how many children she had borne she replied, 'Eleven, but four died, thank God!' Is this an example of the fun- damental atheism of the feminist ideology?

Anna Barnett

48 Narrow Street, London E14