Abortion answers
From Dr C. B. Goodhart Sir: Lord Houghton asks (September 13) what were the grounds for aborting the six foetuses appearing in a recent advertisement in The Spectator. Information about individual cases is of course unlikely now to be available, but the overwhelming majority of legal abortions are known to be procured on psychiatric or social grounds. For example, in 1971 (the year in which these particular foetuses are said to have been aborted) there were 126,777 legal abortions in England and Wales, and the Registrar-General's Supplement on Abortion (Table 19) shows that 6,442 of these (5.1 per cent) were done primarily on non-psychiatric medical indications relating to the mother, and about 2,000 more where there was a risk of defect in the child, The "Primary condition" mentioned was psychiatric in 99,289 cases, of which 73,455 were described as "Neuroses" and a further 23,944 as "Transient situational disturbances", with only 1,491 of the more serious psychotic and personality disorders, and 399 for mental retardation, drug dependence, alcoholism, etc. In addition, there seem to have been nearly 20,000 pregnancies terminated for non-medical social or economic reasons.
C.. B. Goodhart Gonville and Cabs College, Cambridge.
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