Why the need for so many abortions

Well, who would have thought that abortion would become an election issue? Michael Howard has been talking to Cosmo - an unlikely pairing, you must admit - but he has said that he would like the legal abortion limit reduced from 24 to 20 weeks.

Advances in neo-natal care mean babies have a better chance of life from an even earlier stage and it has already inspired lots of thought-provoking pictures of happy healthy babies who were born at 23 weeks.

But it's all a bit of a red herring actually - because very few abortions are carried out at the current legal limit. And those are generally because of medical emergencies or the late discovery of abnormalities, and only occasionally because panic-stricken teenage girls have tried to pretend they're not pregnant until it's almost too late.

So even if the law is changed, it will actually make very little difference.

But it does no harm to talk about abortion. Because even if you believe in a woman's right to choose (and I do, I do), there are still some disturbing facts that we seem unwilling to face.

For a start, around 200,000 abortions were performed last year - 200,000. And this at a time when it's never been so easy to get contraception without any difficulty, shame or even embarrassment. Where condoms are available in every supermarket, where the Pill is there for the asking and the morning-after Pill as easy to get as aspirin.

So why the need for so many abortions?

Many women and young girls can go through an abortion without a second thought. Some are not so lucky. True, not many like Coronation Street's Katy Harris find an abortion helps drive them to murder, but it can often be disturbing, sometimes many years later.

Abortion was meant to be the last resort for the desperate and unlucky - not a rescue service for those too idle to bother with contraception.

Abortion should be available on demand, but that demand should be the result only of exceptional and unavoidable circumstances.

And if it takes politicians and an election to make us wake up and start thinking about what we're doing, then maybe it's not a bad thing. At least it's more interesting - and relevant - than your average party political broadcast.

THE Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, Steve Green, has caused a minor furore by complaining that his officers spend too much time on paperwork and not enough on fighting crime. He wants, needs, more money for more clerks to do the work, while his police officers do what they're trained for.

Every time I take Smaller Son back to university in Nottingham he likes to point out the sights in the area around his house - the doorstep where there was a shooting, the kebab shop where there was a murder, the pub where his mates were beaten up, the pavement where a friend was robbed and stabbed, the playing field where he and his friends were attacked by a gang of Asian youths hurling bricks and bottles.

Nottingham has had a surge of crime, especially gun crime. Nottinghamshire police are currently dealing with 30 murder investigations. A bit more help with the paperwork seems the very least they need.

www.thisisthenorthernecho.co.uk /griffiths.html

Published: 16/03/2005