Report on Abortion

Abstract

THE report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Abortion, which was appointed by the Minister of Health and the Home Secretary under the chairmanship of Mr. Norman Birkett, K.C., has been issued (H.M. Stationery Office. 2s. 6d. net). In the Majority Report, signed by fourteen members, the question of the prevalence of abortion is first examined. They stress the difficulties entailed in arriving at any estimate; but suggest that the number of abortions occurring annually in England and Wales is between 110,000 and 150,000, of which perhaps forty per cent are criminal. The Committee discusses the existing law, analyses the motives for criminal abortion and the methods employed, and examines proposals for amending the law. It recommends that the law should be clarified so as to make it plain that the induction of abortion is legal when the operation is carried out to save the life, or to prevent impairment of health, of the pregnant woman, but expresses strong opposition on ethical, social and medical grounds to any broad relaxation of the law. It is recommended that therapeutic abortions should be notifiable by the operator to the medical officer of health, and that there should be some restriction on the sale of abortifacient drugs. The majority of members of the Committee are not prepared on general grounds to recommend the unrestricted dissemination of birth control advice by the public health services.