Reincarnation of Arguments Demolished
50 Years Ago
50 Years Ago
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| Beautiful survivor |
And so, on 6th November 2017, during an adjournment debate in the UK House of Commons commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Abortion Act, Diana Johnson, Labour Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull North, resurrected a hoary old chestnut when she said:
“We used to be a country where an estimated 87,500 to 100,000 illegal abortions took place every year”.In saying this Diana Johnson was both correct and incorrect at the same time. She was correct that there was a time, during the 1950s and 1960s, when the number of abortions in the UK was estimated to be 100,000 but was incorrect in her implication that this was some sort of an official or even an accepted estimate, when in fact, it was neither.
100,000 was the figure most often quoted in 1966/67 when the Bill, which became the Abortion Act, was being debated in Parliament. Indeed, in a study of the first three years of the Abortion Act, Mrs. Madeleine Simms, who was much concerned as General Secretary of the Abortion Law Reform Association at the time, said
"during parliamentary debates on the Abortion Act, the Home Secretary used this as his base-line figure".
Since this was upgraded in press reports of her article "the official figure used by the Home Secretary, for the number of criminal abortions each year was 100,000", it may be useful to recall that what the Home Secretary, Mr Roy Jenkins, actually said in 1966 in the House of Commons in support of the Bill was:
"perhaps as many as 100,000 illegal operations a year take place'. (22 July 1966 column 1141)."
Coming from the Home Secretary these words were bound to have, and did have, a great effect and influence upon the MPs taking part in the debate. They believed that the Home Secretary knew what he was talking about and was telling the truth. In fact Mr Jenkins was not telling the truth and he knew it.
Because his speech was a speech supporting a Private Member's Bill, upon which the government's collective attitude was one of neutrality, Mr Jenkins prefaced his remarks by saying
Because his speech was a speech supporting a Private Member's Bill, upon which the government's collective attitude was one of neutrality, Mr Jenkins prefaced his remarks by saying
" I am speaking for myself, as I am entitled to do, as is any other hon. member, and on my own responsibility"So whether or not Mr Jenkins' estimate was correct (which it was not), it plainly has no authority as 'the official figure'.
Dr. C.B. Goodhart of Cambridge University wrote in a letter to the Eugenics Review in 1964 giving his reasons for expressing grave doubts that the number of illegal abortions being carried out was 100,000. He later wrote an article in which he considered the frequency of illegal abortion. After considering the number of abortions which he described as “the estimate (or rather the guess) of 50,000 - 100,000 abortions a year” he came to the conclusion that a figure of 10,000 was more likely the case. He declared this figure was
“only a guess and is probably too low, but it may perhaps be no further from the truth than others five or ten times higher that are now widely accepted”.
In 1973 Dr Goodhart published another article in which he showed clearly that the true figure could not have exceeded 20,000 and was probably nearer to 15,000. In addition the RCOG, at the time of the passing of the Abortion Act, suggested that the true figure for illegal abortions would not have been more than 14,000.
Diana Johnson's speech is part of a well financed and organised campaign being unleashed now, attempting to legalise the practice of abortion even wider than it already is. "Decriminalisation" is the word used as a smoke-screen to disguise the purpose of this campaign, which is intended to increase the number of killings of unborn children and the income of the abortion agencies.
Despite the figure of 100,000 illegal abortions having been shown 50 years ago to be entirely untrue, still this claim is raised again in support of the present day campaign. Recycling the same old, demolished arguments is one of the ways in which abortionists prosecute their campaign.
Diana Johnson's speech is part of a well financed and organised campaign being unleashed now, attempting to legalise the practice of abortion even wider than it already is. "Decriminalisation" is the word used as a smoke-screen to disguise the purpose of this campaign, which is intended to increase the number of killings of unborn children and the income of the abortion agencies.
