Letter: My sense of loss after abortion

Sir: Like other pro-abortionists, Suzanne Moore has no new arguments in favour of abortion (6 December). This makes her article typical of present pro-choice writing. It also explains why, as she herself admits, the pro-choice position is now looking less and less defensible. For there is a new argument for a pro-life position, and a very powerful one: it's called ultrasound.

In 1996, we all know from scans what a baby in the womb looks like at 12 weeks' gestation; in 1967, we didn't. In 1996, any mother-to-be can use a scan to watch her unborn baby having the hiccups, or falling asleep: in 1967, she couldn't.

Because of ultrasound, in 1996 we can understand what we are doing in killing a child in the womb much more clearly than we could in 1967. That's why it's time to rethink the morality of abortion in the light of our new appreciation of the unborn child's humanity. That's why it won't do just to trot out the same old arguments as worked for the pro-choice side in 1967.

DR T D J CHAPPELL

Philosophy Department

University of Manchester