I should like to challenge some of Andrea Dibben’s assertions about abortion (‘Why I am pro-choice’, April 30).

The most striking inaccuracy is the outrageous claim that the foetus (or, more accurately, baby in the womb) is unaware of his/her own existence. Music played next to a pregnant mother’s tummy often stills the child’s movement. There is clear ultrasound evidence of a foetus flinching markedly when a needle penetrates his/her body. Foetuses swallow the fluid around them, breathe, hear and, from 23-24 weeks’ gestation, are viable outside the mother’s womb. The nervous system and most major organs are pretty well developed by the end of the 12th week of pregnancy. A foetus is a baby. His/her life is part of the continuum. There is no “magic moment” when the foetus/baby becomes human.

This is not to deny the need for provision of care for expectant mothers, an abandonment of disapproval of unplanned pregnancies, ensuring that tax, health and social policies support families, and the awareness of the terrible suffering of rape victims.

The number of abortions is falling because the number of pregnancies in the West is plummeting. Aborting 200,000 pregnancies annually in the UK and France is indefensible by any standards of decency. A pro-abortion journalist of The Times of London recently memorably described it as “industrial scale slaughter”, overwhelmingly for pregnancies conceived as a result of failure to use adequate contraception.

A society which rightly eschews capital punishment for hardened criminals should not adopt a utilitarian approach towards this issue; it is not logical.

Vulnerable and helpless human beings should be protected by law, whatever age they may be. I have yet to meet, within my 38 years as a doctor and just under 60 years of life, a sane human being who wishes s/he had been aborted without his/her consent.