Abortion's cost
Sir: Quentin Crewe's wonderfully dismis- sive letter at Ms Smoker prompts consideration of an associated aspect of the recently and politically contrived crisis in the NHS. If it is true that 170,000 abortions were carried out in Britain in 1986, most of them being convenience killings, should it not be possible for someone to quantify the effort needed in those operations in terms of nursing staff hours and bed utilisation and overall costs in general and translate the results into a comparison with the number of lives that might have been saved had at least the NHS element of those resources been directed to that end?
Would there, in fact, be any 'crisis' in the NHS if there were no abortion law; if there were, particularly, no David Steel; if, now, alas, there were no Mrs Thatcher?
B. Devereux
121 Blackpool Road, Ansdell, Lytham, Lancashire
Previous page
