There was a student with me at college. There were only two of us doing applied science, so one day,when she didn't turn up, we didn't start the session, waiting for her. After a while, I went over to the flat where she lived. No answer. A young man on the stairs hadn't seen or heard from her that day. Back to the lab. The technician was able, through the technicians' grapevine, to reach a closer friend in the art department. Somehow, someone got into her flat. She was in the bath, and had nearly bled to death, having used a knitting needle. Her life was, fortunately, saved. The older man she had been seeing had persuaded her he was going to divorce his wife. When she fell pregnant (and this was before easily available birth control) he told her the truth, and the needle was the result.

Nothing is going to stop that sort of thing happening, if there is not ready access to alternatives. Who would think of the law, when they were in that state? Not only the baby, but the total sense of rejection, of having been lied to and used, would make it hard, even now, when provision is better, to approach the matter rationally. Being able to reach an appropriate agency could even give the help which might make the abortion no longer seem necessary. To be cut off from anything which looked helpful because of laws against it would lead again to the backstreets.

Penny