Abortion
Sir: What an absurd fellow Mr Edwards is! He talks of "Good Roman Catholic Countries like France, Spain, Italy and Ireland where abortion, VD, and wickedness generally, flourishes far more luxuriously than in these puritannical islands." He produces no figures to support this incredible statement, no references to medical and scientific papers, or even a definition of what he means by "wickedness generally" (not genuflecting as they pass the door of the family planning associations?) Perhaps he has the misfortune to believe some of those fictitious figures which claim to be an estimate of the number of illegal abortions performed in those countries. We are unable to estimate the number of illegal abortions in our own country, we certainly can't in theirs.
Margaret White 22 Upfield, Croydon
From Dr C. B. Goodhart
Sir: In 1970, 75,962 women resident in England and Wales had legal abortions, compared with 94,570 in 1971 and about 106,000 and 118,000 in 1972 and 1973 respectively; while Mreign visitors' abortions increased from 10,603 to more than 50,000 over the same period. Mr Haydn Lloyd Edwards (July 6) may think your Dr Linklater "an absurd fellow" for talking about "soaring abortion rates" on the grounds that "the British (as opposed to foreigners') abortion figures have hardly changed for the past three years" — but that all depends on what you Mean by 'hardly': Mr Edwards, no doubt, would claim that the cost of living had hardly changed either.
But to get back to Dr Linklater's main point, which was whether the Brook Advisory Centre policy of making contraceptive supplies freely available to
the unmarried had had disappointing results over the past ten years, at any rate so far as reducing the illegitimate impregnation rate is concerned. The best evidence on this comes from Aberdeen, with a reputation second to none for sex education and family planning (slot machines all over the university, and so on), and operating a highly permissive policy on therapeutic abortion sinceahe 1950's,,as,aresult of-which it is generally agreed that illegal abortion there was a negligible problem, even before the • 1967 -Act. And yet knOwn' illegitimate pregnancies (illegitimate live births + stillbirths + legally procured and spontaneous abortions) have increased more than two and a half times over the past ten years, from 181 in 1961 to 480 in 1971.
C. B. Goodhart
Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge
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