Danger : people
Sir: While the site of New Ash Green was not part of the original, extremely narrow, London green belt, Mr Leslie Bilsby (Letters, 22 September) knows as well as I do that it was part of the pro- posed extension to the green belt, that both the rural district council and the Kent County Council opposed the building of the village on green belt grounds, and that the site was sold to the develop- ment company as agricultural land. The ministry's decision to ignore local opinion on this issue fore- shadowed the great scandal of Stansted, and is an indication of what will happen to other green belt proposals if Britain's population is allowed to grow unimpeded. Mr J. C. Spence (15 September) objects that the proposals contained in my article of 8 September would turn the medical profession into an instru- ment of government policy.' Yet the medical pro- fession is already the instrument of pro-natalist government policy. General practitioners receive fifteen guineas from the state for the free services they provide in pregnancy cases. Yet they receive nothing from the state for providing contraceptive services, and are entitled to charge their patients fees ranging from lOs 6d for prescribing the pill to five guineas for fitting an mu.
Providing contraceptives would obviously be less burdensome tto both the general practitioners and the hospitals than caring for a woman during nine months of pregnancy. providing for her confine- ment, and following this up with post-natal ser- vices to both mother and child. As for the cost, Dr Dorothy Morgan has estimated that her domiciliary birth control service to 110 parents in Southamp- ton has saved local and national revenue £5,874 by eliminating unwanted pregnancies.
Michael Walls The Glade. Skithorne Rise, Lowdham, Nottingham
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