From Mary Kenny Sir: Some points of information for Mr
James Guest: Abortion is not mentioned in the Bible because it could not then be done without risking the mother’s life. It only became a safe and simple medical procedure for the woman after Wu and Wu invented the vacuum aspirator in 1934. Not coincidentally, Sweden began discussing legalisation after this event. The technology to terminate pregnancy became ever easier and cheaper: I encountered a group of selfaborting feminists in the 1980s who performed the procedure on each other for £2.50, the price of a rocket syringe.
It is dangerous to suggest that law should be based on what people ‘feel’ is right or wrong. I have encountered supporters of the IRA in Belfast who saw nothing wrong with ‘knocking off Brits’. They ‘felt’ it was perfectly justified. But there must be some objective criteria of what the state does and does not regard as lawful. The director of Marie Stopes International, Dr Timothy Black — once characterised as ‘Lunchtime O’Bortion’ in Private Eye because of his advocacy of quick and easy abortions which could be carried out over a lunchtime — has said that a legal limit of 20 weeks’ pregnancy should now be drawn. Sweden draws the line at 18 weeks. This does not seem unreasonable to most people.
Mary Kenny
Deal, Kent
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