Zoe Williams (G2, October 26) writes as if abortion raises no ethical issues: for her, and those she quotes, it would be “regulated like any other healthcare measure”. However, in presenting her bill, Diana Johnson MP said that “decriminalisation will not make it easier to access abortions post-24 weeks”, and indeed that “professional bodies that are best placed to take action can continue to prohibit [gender preference] as a ground for abortion” (before 24 weeks). Thus abortion would not be like any other medical procedure. It would be odd if removing a tumour became illegal if it had been growing for more than a statutorily defined time. Williams and others of like mind don’t wish to admit, far less confront, the moral difficulties that difference presents.
Andrew Anderson
Edinburgh
• The enthusiastic support for unrestricted abortion – eg the full-page article in Wednesday’s Society pages and the G2 article by Zoe Williams – appears increasingly one-sided in a newspaper usually noted for fair and unbiased reporting of current social issues.
In joining the lemming-like rush to promote the termination of pregnancy at will, up to birth, the inevitable side-effects that go with the ending of nascent life and the impact on mental and physical health surrounding abortion are wilfully ignored, it seems.
And is it not ironic that the NHS, in obedience to the prevailing ideology, is happy to find £900 for each termination while starving other vital services of desperately needed resources? Shame on us all.
Shirley Harrington
Bury, Greater Manchester
• Zoe Williams’ claim that “far from undermining maternal devotion, abortion might well be a signal of it” deserves to rank as a blatant contradiction alongside the remark made by an American officer in Vietnam to the effect that “it became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it”. What Ms Williams fails to mention is the human toll of abortion in Great Britain alone: nearly 200,000 abortions each year, over eight million since 1967.
Zoe Williams seems to be disturbed that protesters outside abortion clinics carry pictures of unborn children. She ought to be: these are the modern equivalents of the 18th-century engravings used by opponents of the slave trade of a black man in chains asking “Am I not a man and a brother?” They are graphic reminders of one the great human rights violations of our age: the destruction of children in the womb.
CDC Armstrong
Belfast
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