Abortion: British charity’s view

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33447, 31 January 1974, Page 17

Abortion: British charity’s view

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent)

LONDON, January 30.

Women who have abortions in Britain are seldom irresponsible or promiscuous, as critics of liberal abortion law often claim, according to a British charity, the Pregnancy Advisory Service.

It bases its opinion on a survey of 1000 women who used the service last month. This showed that those who sought abortion did so because of poverty, housing problems, or rejection by boy-friends or husbands. Of the 1000, only 37 were pregnant as a result of casual affairs, and 24 per cent of those women were married. Forty per cent of the pregnancies occurred in spite of comparatively reliable contraceptive methods. Twenty per cent of the women questioned had been unable to manage on their present income, and 48 per cent had to continue working because they were either self-supporting or contributed to a family budget. The earnings of 42 per cent of the married women were essential to their economic survival, especially as many were bringing in money than their husbands. The P.D.S. report says that

single girls faced the greatest pressure to have an abortion: 26 per cent had been deserted by their boy-friends, half depended on their own earnings, while a third were caring for dependent relatives. Many were given no financial or emotional support by their parents, some of the younger girls even being threatened with eviction unless they had an abortion. These findings, together with a falling-off in the steep increase in the number of abortions done in Britain each year since the liberalising 1967 Abortion Act—including those on women coming from abroad —gives considerable support to those in favour of the act, the working of which is now being looked into by the Lane Committee of Inquiry for a report to be presented to the Minister for Social Services (Sir Keith Joseph) before the end of the year.