All women must have access to safe services

THE EDITOR: I sincerely hope you will find it convenient to publish this brief reply to Ms Annette Dopwell’s letter (Newsday, July 12). Ms Dopwell uses the tragedy of a single case to remind us of the danger of abortion. She should also remind your readers that an abortion in the first eight weeks of pregnancy is 11-20 times safer than delivery at term under similar medical conditions. Childbirth is actually more hazardous to women than an early abortion. We call for making abortion legal precisely to achieve the oversight and the professional standards Ms Dopwell seeks. As long as abortion remains legal but severely restricted, as it is here, the net result is a clandestine service that exists outside of the Medical Council’s scrutiny. While women with money have access to private physicians, poor women take risks with non-medical providers. We want all women to have equal access to safe services. Every abortion terminates a potential human life. We therefore consider the decision to have an abortion a very serious matter and one in which the woman needs access to the best counsel and medical care possible.

This is not a situation for coercion — whether by a reluctant father, embarrassed parents (to have the abortion) or by rigid religious leaders (to continue the pregnancy). This is a place in which a woman must make her own informed and considered choice. We campaign for a civil law of abortion to create transparency and regulations. We support law reform because we are pro-choice, pro-family and pro-life. We are not, as Ms Dopwell asserts, pro-abortion. We are pro-safe motherhood. And we want every child to be wanted and loved. Finally, we have campaigned for a new law on the basis of (1) the failure of the current law and the public health problem it creates and (2) the social injustice that the criminal law creates between rich and poor women. We have not campaigned for women’s “rights” as Ms Dopwell claims. Every need and every case we have made can be objectively measured.

ASPIRE
Port-of-Spain