Snt,—I expect Mr Quentin de la Bedoyere is wish- ing
he had at least postponed his letter for another week. He assures us there cannot be more than 10,000 abortions annually. On that very day, National Opinion Polls publish the results of their abortion survey, showing that a minimum of 40,000 women have abortions in this country each year, three-
quarters of them illegally; and that 85,000 women attempt abortions each year, though rarely success- fully. NOP concludes from this that there are not fewer than 600,000 women in Britain today who have at some stage in the last twenty years had an abor- tion. They also point out that 'the survey shows that Roman Catholic women are no less likely to have had an abortion than women of other religious con- victions.' (These women will no doubt hear with in- terest from Mr de la Bedoyere that they ought to at least to have had their aborted foetuses baptised!)
I'm afraid Mr de la Bedoyere's letter, if it is to be taken seriously, really does reveal the yawning gap that exists between wishful thinking and real life,
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