Project Administrator, Author at Protection of Conscience Project Library

Responsibility and Conscience

Lynne Belaief

Extract
In philosophical ethics, if one asks the question, is ethics possible, it is inconveniently, and, I will argue, erroneously assumed that he has also raised the notorious problem, what is the definition of “the good”? Various confusions attend the latter inquiry, including the remarkably ambiguous insistence that “the good” cannot be defined – implying that one in fact knew a great deal about its meaning in order to know this. I here intend to reject this typical but inconvenient quest principally because all such initial inquiries into the definition of “the good” are potentially important only within a particular ethical perspective, which is already therefore presupposed as true. The logic and ethical value of that perspective, here named legalistic or authoritarian ethics, is to be contrasted with the perspective called creative ethics, and discarded.

Belaief L. Responsibility and Conscience. Philos Today. 1969;13(1):60-79.

(Correspondence) Pregnancy Advisory Services

Sara R. Abels

British Medical Journal, BMJ — British Medical Journal

Extract
In fact, the London-based Pregnancy Advisory Service, the only one about which I can speak with authority, is a registered charity run on similar lines to the Family Planning Association. It employs a full-time social worker and doctors on a sessional basis who advise patients who have not been able to obtain a sympathetic hearing from their own doctors, or those who, in increasing numbers, have actually been sent to us by their family doctors because, although they have grounds for abortion under the Abortion Act, the local consultants are unable or unwilling to accept most abortion cases, and the patients cannot afford the fees charged for abortions in regular private practice…

Abels SR. (Correspondence) Pregnancy Advisory Services. Br Med J. 1969;1(5642):506.

(Correspondence) Abortions and Gynaecological Practice

DHK Soltau, WJ Baker

Extract
Already we are finding that the impact of the Abortion Act is making great demands on hospital beds and operating time, and we agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Lewis’s statement to the effect that the whole character of the gynaecologist’s outpatient work has altered because of the numerous requests for termination at almost every session.

Soltau D, Baker W. (Correspondence) Abortions and Gynaecological Practice. Br Med J. 1969 Feb 22;1(5642):506-507.

The Abortion Act

T.L.T. Lewis

Extract

The part played by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in the framing of the Abortion Act is familiar. The College aimed to make it legal to terminate a pregnancy only on medical grounds . . . Moreover, we wished to preserve the right of a doctor to refuse to participate in the treatment of any case to which he had an objection on grounds of conscience: hence the famous “conscience clause.” . . . we did not expect a very great change in practice . . . How wrong we were….

Lewis TLT. The Abortion Act. Br Med J. 1969 January 25; 1(5638): 241–242

(Editorial) Demand for Abortion

British Medical Journal

Extract
. . .at the present rate and with no further increase in demand the annual number of abortions in England and Wales would be at least 35,000. He compared this demand with an estimate from the Ministry of Health and Registrar General’s Office of 1,600 therapeutic abortions in 1958 and 2,800 in 1962. The public have thus endorsed the Act and are asking doctors to implement it in a liberal way. . . . It is apparent that the Abortion Act has brought many people what they wanted-namely, a more liberal attitude towards the termination of pregnancy. . . The number of unwanted pregnancies indicated by the latest figures underlines the need for all doctors working in the National Health Service to provide adequate and accurate advice on contraception.

BMJ. (Editorial) Demand for Abortion. Br Med J. 1969;1(5638):199-200.

(Editorial) Therapeutic Abortion

British Medical Journal

Extract
[Notes increase in abortion since change in law. Discusses abortion methods.] “In summary, when the decision has been taken to terminate pregnancy it is best carried out in the first fourteen weeks by a conventional one-stage evacuation or by vacuum suction, and later in pregnancy by abdominal hysterotomy. But therapeutic abortion is not a simple operation. Those who would extend the scope of legal abortion on purely social grounds would do well to remember that no method of terminating pregnancy is entirely devoid of risk. The operation is only as safe as the surgeon who performs it. Mishaps will occur, and they will be kept to a minimum only when operations are performed in well-equipped hospitals by skilled gynaecologists who are well aware of the dangers.”

BMJ. (Editorial) Therapeutic Abortion. Br Med J. 1968;4(5634):786-787.

A question of conscience

JC Gerber

Gerber JC. A question of conscience. Cathol Nurse 1968 Dec;17(2):23-9 passim.

(Correspondence) Requests for Abortion

PG Seed

Extract
[suggests] the establishment of abortion clinics staffed by personnel adept at processing all cases referred. Doctors who claim conscientious objection could be assigned compensatory work in the present infertility clinics.

Seed P. (Correspondence) Requests for Abortion. Br Med J. 1968 Aug 24; 3(5616):499.

(Correspondence) Requests for Abortion

HB Bagshaw, TT Lee, J McAuley

Extract
patients requesting abortions are taking up considerable outpatient time, sidestepping our long waiting-lists, and occupying valuable hospital beds-all these at the expense of the genuine gynaecological patients. . . At a recent count, one in five of the patients in our wards are cases for termination of pregnancy. Their increasing numbers have been an embarrassment to many medical and nursing staff who have conscientious objections, especially those working in the operating- theatre.

Bagshaw H, Lee T, McAuley J. (Correspondence) Requests for Abortion. Br Med J. 1968;3(5616):499.

(Correspondence) Risks of Abortion

K Vernon Bailey

Extract
Although the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists considers that most cases will be referred to N.H.S. hospitals and will come under the care of consultant gynaecologists, it is nevertheless probable that some will be admitted to ” a place approved for the purpose by the Ministry of Health or the Secretary of State,” and additionally may not come under the care of a trained and experienced obstetrician. Therein to my mind lies a danger to these women, as the numbers seeking abortion continues to increase and as hospital beds become so severely taxed as to necessitate delay in admission. The difference between the risks of the operation in the early weeks and in the weeks between the ninth and the fourteenth is considerable, and after this point an abdominal approach must be considered. . .

For these reasons, in my earlier letter I feared the possibility of panic measures leading to unethical surgery in inadequate surroundings (apart from authorized units) and stressed the need for the hospital consultant to be directly concerned in all cases.

Bailey KV. (Correspondence) Risks of Abortion. Br Med J. 1968;2(5604):557.