LETTERS Abortion's Canute
Sir: So The Spectator would emulate King Canute, by 'Turning abortion's tide' (24• October). Mr David Steel's 1967 Abortion Act was not just a 'more liberal law'. It made legal, under strictly defined condi- tions, what was previously criminal and not reported. The increase in abortions you deplore, between 1969 (only two years after the bill) and 1985, were increases in the free reporting of a legal activity.
Is there any Spectator reader of my generation (1900-1910) who, before 1967, did not know of, or know personally, some girl who had, or had attempted to have, a criminal abortion? I mean girls from my own respectable middle class, who read The Spectator or the New Statesman. Is there any medical practitioner of my gen- eration who has not been asked to per- form, or advise on the procurement of, a criminal abortion by such middle-class women? I have, and have had to refuse. Such incidents were never reported, except as crimes if discovered by the police. Elsewhere, in the crowded slums of our towns, the back-street abortionist flourished. Our hospitals spent much time cleaning up the inevitable results, but these were seldom reported as deliberate abor- tions, as were your 54,000-172,000.
While agreeing with your criticisms of the silly views of feminist journalists, I find your own views in your last three para- graphs, equally pompous and silly. 'There has never been a time of so much child abuse'. Never? Wasn't there a row about the sale of children for prostitutes in Victorian times? That was before anyone called it child abuse. These unsavoury facts are exposed and reported more fully than before: perhaps because, 'There has never been a time when people have known as much as they now do about sex.'
If Mr Alton can reduce the age of the aborted, well and good. But neither he nor The Spectator can turn the tide in a tideless pool.
Trewavas Eddy
35 Brunswick Street West, Hove, Sussex
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