Letter: Doctor jailed for woman's choice

Doctor jailed for woman's choice

Sir: Well done Suzanne Moore! Her article "Speaking up for the right to abortion" (6 December) is absolutely right. I can remember as a young girl in the Thirties taking part in a demonstration against the sentencing to imprisonment of a brave doctor, Alec Bourne, who performed an abortion on a teenager who had been gang-raped by soldiers. Abortion was, of course, illegal in those days (although it was done privately, often in horrific conditions). But this doctor made it public, to try and get the law changed.

How dare these pro-lifers, many of whom are men, tell us women we have no choice in the matter? What does a man know anyway about the agonising choice a woman with an unwanted pregnancy has to make? We pro-choicers should speak out before it is too late.

Mrs P L COHEN

London NW3