Journal Correspondence Archives - Page 23 of 24 - Protection of Conscience Project Library

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

Richard De Soldenhoff

British Medical Journal, BMJ — British Medical Journal

Extract
Without wishing to appear pompous, as a senior obstetrician who has been in charge of an obstetrical service in a large provincial district for 20 years, I think that to bring in legalized abortion would be a terrible mistake. It has been our policy to carry out an abortion where necessary on any case deserving it for therapeutic, social economic, or moral reasons, and to consider the question of sterilization with ,sympathy whenever requested.

Soldenhoff RD. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966 May 07;1(5496):1168.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

DM Kerslake

Extract
I have used the suction curette for over a year now and on over fifty cases, with no untoward effects whatsoever and a minimum of both blood loss and operating time. I hope to publish these results in another journal in more detail shortly. It is quite ridiculous that constant emphasis should be placed on the dangerous and outdated methods of surgery and that newer methods be criticized with, I am sure, ignorance.

Kerslake D. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966 May 07;1(5496):1169.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

KS Jones

Extract
No doubt more intensive social facilities would often be welcome, but to suggest that individual workers need to be forced to ” take up their full responsibilities ” is strongly to be deprecated.

Jones K. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966 Apr 23;1(5494):1050.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

GW Theobald

Extract
Parliament must clearly decide whether they are mainly concerned with preventing the birth of defective children or with accommodating pregnant women. If they intend to move further than they have done in Scandinavia and give ” abortion rights ” to women they will have to set up special abortion clinics staffed by ” committed” gynaecologists. . . the profession, for its part, must devise simpler and more effective means of birth control and of sterilization, and perhaps be willing to offer the latter to all women who have had two or more children.

Theobald G. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966;1(5493):977-978.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

DG Withers

Extract
I should like to question the right of a gynaecologist to refuse to do the work he is employed to do on grounds of moral prejudice. What would be the consequence, I wonder, if a surgeon refused to order blood transfusion on the basis of his beliefs as a Jehovah’s Witness ? It is a well-accepted principle of medical ethics that treatment should not depend on race, colour, or creed of patient or doctor. I maintain, therefore, that it is clearly wrong for a person not prepared to perform abortions to follow a profession which requires him to do so.

Withers D. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966 Apr 16;1(5493):978.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

RW Taylor

Extract
No doubt we could eventually be so conditioned that abortion, or the destruction of any other life too for that matter, gave no concern to our professional consciences. It is at least debatable whether any such alteration, not to say lowering, of our ethical standards would benefit either our patients or ourselves.

Taylor RW. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966;1(5489):738.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

James Campbell

Extract
In actual fact we know that many primitive tribes have practised abortion and child destruction for long periods. I suggest that Mr. Mills should examine the cultural origin of his feelings, then perhaps he would come to the conclusion that there are many occasions when termination of pregnancy would prevent many years of suffering, so that neither revulsion nor guilt need be felt.

Campbell J. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966 Mar 05;1(5487):613-614.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

Denis Pells Cocks

Extract
Nowadays therapeutic abortion is performed relatively rarely for organic disease, and the indications are largely psychiatric with often associated secondary social factors. Whilst some clarification of the old law may be necessary in order that all can understand the situation, we must beware lest in reframing the law this results in the opening of the floodgates in the demand for termination on more liberal grounds.

Cocks DP. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966 Feb 26;1(5486):539.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

Robert Burns

Extract
It seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude that an increasingly large number of therapeutic abortions will be dealt with privately in the future. I am therefore perturbed that an attempt is being made to limit the activities of medical practitioners who are not in the N.H.S. I refer to the desire of Lord Dilhorne to make it necessary that at least one of the two doctors who will take responsibility for a therapeutic abortion must be in the N.H.S.

Burns R. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966;1(5485):482.

(Correspondence) A Question of Conscience

Arabella Kenealy

Extract
Only this much have I suggested, that in view of that which is plainly a higher mandate; in view of the multiple miseries of the syphilitic infant and child, and its degenerate maturity; in view more especially of the fact that not upon us, but upon these miserable little creatures from whom we avert the mercy of abortion, the consequences of our interference fall, we should in all cases in which Nature is trying to cast off a syphilitic foetus thankfully allow her to do so.

Kenealy A. (Correspondence) A Question of Conscience. Br Med J. 1895;2(1815):934.