PLANNED FAMILIES [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—In your
admirable comment on the Report of the Inter- Departmental Committee on Abortion you speak of the strong arguments against " the infliction of successive unwanted pregnancies on every• woman who cannot prove that another baby will wreck her health." I wonder how many of your readers know that more than half the Local Authorities in this country have still taken no effective steps to prevent this infliction on a woman who can prove that another baby will wreck her health? In all these areas, the woman who is medically unfit to bear another child may have one and die for all the Local Authority does to help her. No wonder the Report speaks of the available facilities " as being seriously inadequate to satisfy the need."
The Family Manning Association (formerly the National Birth Control Association) has worked for nine years to secure the provision of scientific advice on contraception as part of the normal health services of the nation. A great part of this work has been with Local Authorities; in addition to this the Association has 64 branches which run 67 voluntary clinics. The Association has also recently undertaken responsibilities outside this country, and now has an organiser in India and a branch in Hong-kong.
As you say, " in one way or another women will go on limiting their families "—and this in spite of all the population experts may say. Indeed, a family of three or four children needs spacing as much as a family of one or two.
Will anyone who is interested and/or ready to help write to me for further particulars?—Yours, &c.,
G. DENMAN,
Chairman, Executive Committee. The Family Planning Association, 69 Eccleston Square, London, S.W. r.
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