Sir: Those of us who know something about the National
Abortion Campaign and how it conducts its campaign feel your readers should know certain facts: a) NAC is not interested in truth. They spread fals.e information about James White's Bill, saying it will not allow abortions in cases of rape, grave physical or mental hardship, etc. James 'White assures us that anyone to whom pregnancy would mean grave physical or mental hardship will be able to get an abortion. One girl told a WEL member that she did not mind disseminating false 'information. The number of Italian women dying per annum from illegal abortion has been exaggerated to 3,000. Italian government statistics estimate 40-200, the lower figure probably being correct.
b) NAC are violent. At Lancaster their supporters threw beer-mugs at a speaker, at Reading they shouted a speaker down and at Warwick University a student was threatened with a brick through his window for wanting to put up an anti-abortion poster. At Acton, an Orthodox Priest was beaten up and in Coventry, Women For Life supporters were turned out of a public meeting simply for putting a point politely at question time.
c) They do not believe in free speech. Anti-abortion posters all over the country have been torn down, and a WEL speaker and members of the public were physically prevented from entering a halt in London. On being asked whether they believed in free speech, the NAC replied "No." At a, college in Coventry, two WEL speakers were forbidden to discuss James White's Bill on the grounds that it was NUS policy to oppose it. Mother magazine was picketed on July 11 simply for printing a factual article by a nurse of what abortion entails for the child and the possible hazards for women. The NAC are demanding a right of reply (which is reasonable, although they do not allow anti-abortionists the :same right), an editorial retraction of the article, and the expulsion of its author from the NUJ. WFL members have sent many letters to Socialist Worker, Women's Voice, Spare Rib, etc, which have not been published, and of the few that have, most have been distorted. Women's Voice printed false information about WEL and then refused to print a letter of retraction by the original informant.
It seems the NAC has a very flimsy case if it Has to rely on untruths, violence and suppression of alternative views, They have no right to Claim to speak for women because most women do no agree with them — Gallup Poll, February 1975: 78 per cent of women oppose abortion on demand and 77 per cent of Labour supporters. Only 12 per cent of women want abortion on demand, and 19 per cent of men.
An unholy alliance has been formed between the women's movement and the neo-Malthusian elements in politics (Keith Joseph's attitude towards the breeding habits of social classes 4 and 5, which has moved Germaine Greer to demand the right to be pregnant irrespective of our marital, intellectual or financial status) and the fascistic elements in medicine. I quote from an article in the British Medical Journal April 5, 1975, by A. Singer and I. Cooke: "It can be no great intellectual revelation that children born illegitimate, from large families and of mothers refused termination, make up a large proportion of today's juvenile and adolescent delinquents. One can only speculate that with curtailment of fecundity in some of these married and unmarried mothers a decrease in or stabilisation of the present daunting situation a propos juvenile crime may occur".
These weird bedfellows of the NAC are only to be, expected from an offshoot of the 1920's Eugenics Society which supported selective breeding. The Eugenics Society gives financial support to the Abortion Law Reform „ Association, which in turn supports the NAC.
It is sickening to see the NAC as credible amongst numerous radicals and working-class people. A -Woman's Right to Choose" becomes a hollow mockery a) because we should not violate the right to life of our unborn young and b) because if right to choose there be, it should be a choice made in the light of all the facts: the nature of the foetus, and methods of abortion, as well as the very real risks to a woman's
physical and mental health, and the motives of a society which will ahot rather than support. Women For Lit suggest a woman's right to know.
Debby Sandeit5
Secretary, Women Fo Flat 2, Russell Terrace, Leainr l-gtoll; nt Spa, Warks
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