Abortion and the law

Harry Vassallo is widely respected as a tenacious and gallant political personage who speaks his honest mind on a very wide range of political issues.

His last contribution to The Times (March 28) however, takes up the resolution on abortion by the CoE in a manner that calls for informed contestation. The heart of his argument is that our laws are antediluvian in matters where science has made vast leaps forward, and that we badly need to bring them up to-date, particularly in the matter of abortion.

He premises his case by stating that "it is technically a crime to administer drugs to a woman suffering from cancer or any other life threatening illness if a treatment is a known abortifacient" and again "it is technically a crime to carry out an abortion on a woman suffering from an ectopic pregnancy which will certainly kill her if allowed to proceed". These statements are with all due respect, not correct.

Anti-cancer drugs are in their vast majority not known abortifacients, and an ectopic pregnancy allowed to proceed undisturbed will not only kill the mother but the foetus as well.

I am no lawyer, however I not only respect the law but have great regard for it. Tampering with the law, reforming it to bring it up to-date, is always a hazardous exercise as a late Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham was ever ready to point out.

We are in a position, felicitous or otherwise, to observe what the liberalisation of the law with regard to abortion has led to in other European states: A veritable slaughter of the innocents. This is a scenario we would dearly hope we will never see in these islands. To facilitate abortion is to embark on a course leading to a slippery slope.

The hard cases Dr Vassallo speaks about are, in my long experience as a doctor, managed here in a highly professional and humane way, sometimes perhaps at the expense of the letter of the law. But the letter of the law is not the paramount consideration. The Pharisees were censured for thinking otherwise.