WHAT a harrowing account by Bernadette Thompson in your feature, "The right choice?", about the 40-year-old Abortion Act (Echo, Oct 26).

Of course the pro-abortion doctor lied to her. Four weeks after conception the heart starts beating; at eight weeks all the organs (except lungs) are working, including the brain; at ten weeks the baby can make a fist, respond to touch and pain, jump off the womb wall.

That's a week short of Bernadette's 11-week pregnancy.

Lord Steel says: "We can all agree there are too many abortions", except apparently Anne Quesney, who wants it on demand, a choice for women "like every other medical procedure".

But pregnancy is not an illness.

No one can have a medical treatment unless a doctor agrees to it. The foetus is not an appendage of the mother's body, over which she has sole rights, but a separate individual who should have the same rights of protection as any other vulnerable person.

No one, for their own convenience, has the legal right to terminate another's life - that's murder.

It's obvious the so-called "safeguards" written into the Act are being circumvented. Yes, it is high time to re-assess the needs and legitimacy of all abortive procedures, including the morningafter pill.

The Reverend Ken Evans, Darlington.