Letter: Real `pro-life' agenda more than abortion

Sir: "Abortion politics sweep into Britain" (report, 30 November). And about time. About time we had an open debate about the whole business.

The Birth Control Trust think the sight of an abortion is "gruesome". They are right. Killing another human being is always a horrible thing. Of course the pro-choice lobby want it all kept safely out of sight. Does that make it all right? Does keeping abortion out of politics, as the Prime Minister wants, make it right?

We are living in a survival-of-the-fittest society - a culture that increasingly claims it is legitimate to pick off the weak and the inconvenient. In Nazi Germany, psychiatric patients were considered inconvenient, and thousands were put to death. It was done legally, it was done behind closed doors and it was done with the connivance of the medical profession. Now it is the unwanted child that is "inconvenient". So 170,000 a year are put to death. It is done legally, it is done behind closed doors and it is done by the medical profession.

What next? Legalised euthanasia for the expensive and troublesome elderly? What will future generations say about us?

HUGH J THOMSON

Consultant surgeon

Birmingham