Dennis Desmond slates a previous correspondent for attacking an organisation which provides abortion services on the grounds, among others, that it is preferable to going back to the “back street abortion” days.

... all pre-abortion counselling is limited to technicalities...- Anton Borg, Gloucester, UK

What he conveniently ignores is the enormous ethical and moral statistical “elephant in the room”. The Abortion Act 1967 in UK was designed to deal with around 10,000 illegal abortions annually; the criteria for being given an abortion were strict.

The most recent statistics tell us that over 200,000 abortions are carried out annually in the UK, these days, fewer than 5,000 of which are for medical reasons; a disturbing number of the latter are for minor and entirely curable issues such as hare lip and webbed toes. Others are carried out because the parents object to the gender of their unborn child. The latest scandals have included the fact that doctors pre-sign abortion forms for women not yet interviewed and that virtually all pre-abortion “counselling” is limited to technicalities, such as “did you make the decision yourself or were you coerced” and regarding the physical aspects of the procedure itself and its aftermath. Nothing whatsoever is done (apart from a quick scan to date the pregnancy) to ascertain whether the reason for requesting an abortion genuinely satisfies the terms of the law.

Mr Desmond may consider this to be a satisfactory situation; I call it extremely disturbing.