Letter: End hypocrisy of abortion rules

Sir: Has anyone made a serious attempt to calculate how many foetal lives would actually be saved by repealing the abortion law? The number of illegal abortions before 1967 is obviously impossible to count but there have been estimates of 250,000 per annum or more. When I was a young doctor, illegal abortion seemed to be everywhere. I suspect that few if any foetal lives would be saved by reverting to that situation.

What is certain is that we would return to a situation that filled the country's emergency gynaecological wards with exsanguinated, sometimes infected, sometimes dying women. Anyone who worked in those wards is likely to regard abortion as inevitable and illegal abortion as a preventable evil.

Dr ANN DALLY

Graffham, West Sussex