Off Topic: Abortion

Just over a week ago, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made a statement on abortion which closely mirrored the way my mind was working. He said:-

The British public is in danger of losing its 'moral focus' on abortion and treating the procedure as normal, rather than a last resort, says the Archbishop of Canterbury.

. . .

There has been an obvious weakening of the feeling that abortion is a last resort in cases of extreme danger or distress,' Williams writes, noting that 'nearly 200,000 abortions a year in England and Wales tell their own story'.

. . .

He also suggests that the present 24-week limit for abortions should be reviewed. 'This issue needs attention, if only because of the fact that the existing law assumes a rather less developed state of medical science than is now the case.'

The extracts shown above are the ones that most closely match what I had been thinking. Then I read this article about abortion in Algeria:-

Banned by law and condemned by Islam, abortion remains a taboo in Algeria, where those who want to interrupt their pregnancy are forced to turn to doctors who operate illegally or to go to Tunisia where the law is more permissive. Despite the strict laws that envisage from five-year prison sentence for those who practice abortion to life sentence for those who practice it repeatedly, at least 80,000 women decide to resort to illegal abortions every year, according to police data. For years, women's rights associations have called unsuccessfully for the decriminalisation of abortion, with the latest appeal coming a few days ago by the president of the Medical Deontology Council, Bekat Borkani, who requested: "to at least allow abortion for women victims of rape". According to some experts, the net increase of the interrupted pregnancies in the last five years is in fact a direct consequence of the increase of sexual violence. According to the data by some associations, two rapes take place in the North African country every 36 hours, although charges are rarely pressed.

80,000 abortions a year in a country where abortion is completely illegal! For comparison, the population of Algeria is some 33.3 million.

This is where I run out of words. Make up your own mind.