Doctors and Abortion The British Medical Association handled the problem
of abortion judiciously at its Bolirnemouth meeting on Monday. It recognized that the problem existed, that it was partly medical brit mainly social in character, and that the Association was concerned only with the medical aspect of it. That it exists is known to no one better than the general practitioner, who is too often appealed to by both married and unmarried patients to effect an abortion, and in all ordinary cases is precluded by law from consenting. One consequence is a certain amount of fairly systematic law-breaking by doctors who are known to be willing to perform the operation, and, what is much more serious, grave damage to health, and some- times loss of life, in the case of patients turning in des- peiaticin to unqualified practitioners. The resolution of the B.M.A. must not be taken for a moment as committing the Association to advocating a relaxation of the law. All it proposes on its own account is a re-examination of the medical grounds on which abortion should be per- mitted, and a concurrent inquiry by some Committee appointed by the Government into the much larger social issues involved. Both are desirable.
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