I refer to Paul Vincenti's letter entitled Pro-abortion Theories (December 14).

I have often read or heard Mr Vincenti's media contributions on the subject of abortion which, whether one agrees or not with his views, have always been presented in a cogent if passionate manner.

His latest letter, however, begs to be answered, not on the abortion issue per se, but rather, on his sweeping statement that "there is no activity in the world that has ever become more common once it was criminalised". As in any other controversial activity (so-called soft drugs immediately spring to mind) one simply cannot compare pre and post illegality statistics for the simple reason that criminalising an issue, in many cases, drives that activity underground. Consequently, statistics gathered in a post illegality environment are flawed at best.

The US and UK statistics quoted by Mr Vincenti in the latter part of his letter may be an indicator of this.

Could it be that the lower pre legality statistics in these countries have something to do with underground operations?

In his very next sentence, Mr Vincenti states that "keeping something illegal, as in the case of the constitutional campaign, will obviously keep numbers (of abortions) down".

As far as I know, abortion is illegal in Malta (something I wholeheartedly endorse) but I fail to see how entrenching this in our Constitution will help in further reducing the numbers.