Category: Abortion

(Correspondence) Therapeutic Abortion

PG Coffey

Canadian Medical Association Journal, CMAJ
Canadian Medical Association Journal

Extract
. . . I can only touch on some of the reasons why I am opposed to therapeutic abortion. My main reason is a moral one, but first a word from a purely medical standpoint. It is being increasingly realized that medical indications for therapeutic abortion are few, if any, and that they are mainly psychiatric. But for every psychiatrist who would say that in a certain case the patient would benefit by having an abortion there would be another who would disagree and say that the long-term effect on the patient’s mind outweighed any immediate beneficial effect that the procedure might have. . . . My plea is that we as a profession not unwittingly commit a moral wrong which future generations of doctors will accept as the norm to the detriment of our human society. My contention is that when a doctor is caring for a pregnant women, he really has two patients on his hands even though one may be very tiny. Is it ever justifiable to kill one patient in the hope that it will improve the lot of the other?

Coffey P. (Correspondence) Therapeutic Abortion. Can Med Assoc J. 1970 Jan 17;102(1):90-91.

(Correspondence) Abortion Act Amendment

Norman Chisholm

British Medical Journal, BMJ
British Medical Journal

Extract
While claiming that there is no suggestion that any general practitioner be excluded from assessing that an abortion is necessary or desirable, what is being sought by the opponents of the Act in its present form is that one of the two doctors should be a consultant gynaecologist holding office in the N.H.S. . . By restricting the operation of ‘the Act to a minority of the profession, many of whom are opposed to it on religious and other grounds, will cripple it.

Chisholm N. (Correspondence) Abortion Act Amendment. Br Med J. 1969 Sep 27;3(5673):783. Available from:

(Correspondence) Pregnancy Termination

Garth Jones

British Medical Journal, BMJ
British Medical Journal

Extract
. . . the popular demand for abortion in our present permissive society is hardly going to decrease, and if the B.M.A. and Royal College are successful in their present efforts the entire abortion demand will then be directed solely at the N.H.S. consultants and the N.H.S. hospital beds to the detriment of both. The essential point, surely, is that the Act as it stands is a bad Act and no amount of piecemeal tinkering will make it better.

Jones G. (Correspondence) Pregnancy Termination. Br Med J. 1969 Aug 02;3(5665):297.

(Correspondence) Abortion Act in Practice

DC Sturdy, RJD Browne

British Medical Journal, BMJ
British Medical Journal

Extract
It follows that any practitioner, whose treatment of pregnancy is interfered with by a colleague without his knowledge or against his advice, has a perfect right to make a complaint to the Central Ethical Committee of the B.M.A..

Sturdy D, Browne R. (Correspondence) Abortion Act in Practice. Br Med J. 1969;2(5654):447.

(Correspondence) Abortion Act in Practice

Richard De Soldenhoff

British Medical Journal, BMJ
British Medical Journal

Extract
I think we must all be a little tired of the diatribes from some members of the medical profession in the press and on television against the Abortion Act. There are quite a number who find it is satisfactory. . . We see these patients at clinics, and we take them into National Health Service hospitals, either maternity units or gynaecological units, and whenever possible do the operation personally… I am a little amazed at the howls of protest that it is interfering with the ordinary work of units and outpatient clinics. . . .I have not, as yet, found that it is making my waiting-list longer or interfering with the intake of patients into the maternity units.

Soldenhoff RD. (Correspondence) Abortion Act in Practice. Br Med J. 1969 Apr 05;51.

(Correspondence) Abortion Act in Practice

Myre Sim

British Medical Journal, BMJ
British Medical Journal

Extract
The Act does not give Dr. Hughes the right to castigate those psychiatrists who, acting “in good faith,” are seriously in doubt as to whether an abortion is justified, and for good reasons know that support and treatment would be at least as effective as abortion in dealing with the problem be it-social or medical. They have ample clinical evidence- to support the ” good faith ” of their decisions . . .. It would be of great interest to see- what factual evidence could be produced to support the many decisions to abort under the present Act.

Sim M. (Correspondence) Abortion Act in Practice. Br Med J. 1969 Apr 5;2(5648):50-51.

(Correspondence) Abortion Act in Practice

JH Hughes

British Medical Journal, BMJ
British Medical Journal

Extract
The Abortion Act is the law of the land and has already proved of immense benefit to many of my patients. It is there to be used and to be applied uniformly throughout the country. It is the antagonism to abortion reform of many doctors, particularly N.H.S. consultants in certain parts of the country, that creates long queues for abortion. . . If all doctors, general practitioners and consultants, put their patient’s welfare before their own religious and biased cobwebbed ideas on abortion, then the new Act would present no problems at all..

Hughes JH. (Correspondence) Abortion Act in Practice. Br Med J. 1969 Mar 8;1(5664):637-638.

(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

British Medical Journal, BMJ
British Medical Journal

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

British Medical Journal, BMJ
British Medical Journal

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