Abortion
Sir: I write with reference to your edi-tonal Abortion on demand (April 13). Termination of pregnancy becomes more and more unpleasant for all concerned, more dangerous to the patient, and closer to murder as the potential of the zygote to develop into one, or just a few, sentient human individuals is progressively realised.
You refer to abortion on demand as 'shocking.' More shocking is a legal system which is the cause of delay such that the suppliant is first subject4d to an agony of uncertainty, and such that medical personnel are distressed by the eventual participation.
• The sanctity of human life must be an important issue in any debate on the subject but the difference between actual and potential is conveniently
• (dare I say irresponsibly) ignored in your editorial, as it always is by those with a particular moralistic axe to grind. To destroy a zygote or early embryo is not to kill a pensioner (the 'unborn child' is surely a little overworked in this context); similarly, to extract a bucketful of sand from the glassworks hopper is not to break a stained glass window. I am a biologist. I know the analogy is not perfect. Let me try to get a little closer: only a fool eating his free-range egg would claim to be devouring a chicken, hatched or unhatched. How many of us are quite such fools as this?
Termination, on social grounds, should be very early in the pregnancy. The best judge of social necessity is the one person whose life is likely to be most affected by a continuation of the developmental process. She must first have all the alternatives explained to her in case she, poor confused female, does not know her own mind. At this stage she is not always a mother, as you artfully imply, but is, like most nulliparous females of appropriate age, only potentially a mother. Uterine evacuation should be made lawful and readily available to women in need. The dangers of the •process should be explained to any applicant who then, with no coercion, should be allowed to make her own decision. Those, sir, who seek to impose their personal morality on others from positions of safety are simply revealing a basically unkind and punitive attitude. We all know who is to be punished and what the-punishment is for, don't we? If the roles were miraculously reversed .and we males suddenly found ourselves liable, and indeed required by,law, to take Undesired pregnancies to term, the asinine and discriminatory law would be liberalised immediately.
David J. Habler 14 Yew Tree Avenue Bradford, Yorkshire.
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