The Royal College of Psychiatrists' Memorandum on the Abortion Act in Practice

Extract

The College strongly supports the Abortion Act which, as the growing number of unwanted pregnancies terminated indicates—37,736 in its first calendar year, 54,819 in 1969 and 80,723 in 1970—has worked well since its inception and has been widely applied throughout the country. We are concerned, however, by the fact that is some areas patients are being denied terminations that they would readily obtain elsewhere. In consequence they have either to persist with an unwelcome pregnancy, resort to the private sector in London (or in some other large city) or have recourse to a back-street abortionist. As a result, commercialization of abortion (the ‘abortion racket’) has developed; this has been attended by adverse publicity in the press which threatens to bring a humane, socially enlightened measure into unnecessary disfavour. There are doubtless many reasons why so few terminations are being performed in some parts of the country, but amongst the more obvious would seem to be: regional disparities in numbers of gynaecologists and gynaecological beds; the influence of certain dominant gynaecologists in swaying their colleagues for or against therapeutic abortion; and the different constructions put on the wording of the Act by gynaecologists, the lay public and non-gynaecological physicians.