Susan (t’wife) spotted a great letter in The Independent today. I thought it worth quoting in full:
Admit it: abortion is used as contraceptive method of choice
Sir: Your leading article on abortion (16 March) states: “Information about birth control should be more widely published … Abortion is never the contraceptive method of choice.” There may be a small minority of people in this country who aren’t aware that contraception can prevent pregnancy. However it simply can’t be true that the vast majority of people who get pregnant by mistake do so because they have never heard of contraception.
There were 181,600 abortions in 2003 compared with 621,469 live births. How many of those 181,600 women took proper precautions to be really sure that they wouldn’t get pregnant, and how many of them took risks? Only 1 per cent of people will get pregnant if using contraception properly. I think the majority who had an abortion in 2003 knew about contraception and had used it in the past, but on the occasion they got pregnant they had sex when they knew they had forgotten to take a pill or didn’t use a condom. They chose to take that risk, and therefore did choose to use abortion as contraception should they get pregnant.
If you are old enough to be having sex you are old enough to remember to use contraception. Excuses such as being drunk and getting carried away aren’t good enough. We condemn people who kill by drink driving. We think that fox hunting is barbaric. Why is killing a foetus because you didn’t act responsibly when having sex any better? Whether or not people are prepared to admit it, abortion is used every day as a method of contraception by people who know all the facts of life.
CLARE WRIGHT
London W12
I don’t know about you but I was horrified by the numbers. I knew that the number of abortions was around the 180k mark, but I had no idea it was so large relative to the live births. Think about it: for every ten live births there are three abortions.
Yes, society in general likes to believe the idea that, “Abortion is never the contraceptive method of choice”. But it’s blind faith driven by an ideology.
The facts tell us to believe something else.
Doggie's Breakfast 
Thanks for that. It’s always amusing (in a sad way) when statements like that (“never the method of choice”) are quoted with no supporting evidence, and yet *we* are said to be the ones operating on blind faith 🙂
pax et bonum
I am always amazed at the fact that it is perfectly legal to end the life of a foetus at such a late date. They are fully formed beings so early on and perfectly capable of survival at a much younger date than often given credit for. My friend is an ex-midwife and currently works for an abortion councelling clinic and she was telling me of stories where babies were aborted after they were born. I also saw in the paper an article of a family in Holland where the baby was born premature, taken away in a dish and placed in a storeroom to die, while the parents frantically tried to find her. When they found her, the doctors etc would do nothing, so they took her home and did everything they could for her. Finally after a week the midwife came to the house and basically was a live in day nurse who spent the whole time trying to stop the mother and baby bonding. But the parents simply did all their bonding at night while the nurse was away. Despite being born prem and basically rejected by the medical profession, she is now 20something and with no brain damage or physical problems other than being slightly more prone than most to chest infections. It just goes to show that we should not right people off before they have a had a real fighting chance at living!! Also a friend of ours has the lightest surviving premature baby, he was given a few hours to survive so the church prayed for him and he just kept on living, much to the doctors surprise his chances of survival went from 1% to 90% in the course of a few weeks, only God can pull that off. That aside the baby is now 3 i think and perfectly normal. It is not our right to take the life of these small beings, we should be offering them all the chances available.