Children first

Published on 09/10/2012 00:00

It is glaringly inconsistent for some government ministers to seek to reduce the abortion rate by dropping the 24-week limit while supporting penalisation of the children of unemployed parents through targeted cuts in the benefits system.

If the survival and welfare of children are crucial, economic support should be available 
as a practical alternative to abortion.

If saving public money is paramount, then surely Tories should be seeking to raise the abortion limit to five years or older.

John Eoin Douglas

Spey Terrace

Edinburgh

Health Secretary and homeopathy enthusiast, Jeremy Hunt, suggests halving the legal time limit for abortions from 24 to 12 weeks in an effort to lower abortion statistics.

But some 90 per cent of UK abortions take place before 12 weeks and medics say such a reduction will make little difference to overall numbers but will put women at risk.

Mr Hunt claims his proposal is “research driven”, but the fact is that many serious foetal anomalies are not discovered until the 20-week scan and in spite of recent medical advances the survival threshold is still around 24 weeks.

Currently, only 2 per cent of all UK abortions occur between 20 and 24 weeks and these are carried out when the women’s life is threatened or the baby
terribly malformed.

If desperate women are 
denied a legal termination they will simply buy abortion pills 
on the internet or resort to unsafe abortionists at home or abroad.

(DR) John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews