Josephine Quintavalle (Letters, September 22) attempts to use history to attack women's rights to choose today. But why focus on interpretations of debates a century ago, when attitudes and realities on many issues have changed? The notion that diversity can be advanced by denying women the right to choose on abortion is untenable. This idea could only be put forward by someone who would elevate the status of every foetus over that of any woman.
Women must be free to make the individual choice about abortion, in the complex circumstances they face. That is what will advance the interests of women, in all their diversity. If we are looking at history, why not consider the uncounted thousands who died from illegal abortion before the 1967 act. Or leave history behind and consider the estimated 70,000 women worldwide who die each year now? That position is recognised as intolerable by most people - including the 83% in this country who support choice on abortion. Josephine Quintavalle is entitled to her hardcore anti-abortion views, but she should let others make choices for themselves.
Chair, Abortion Rights
Josephine Quintavalle's diatribe against Marie Stopes would be more persuasive if she did not put words into Stopes' mouth: the expressions she cites appear nowhere in Stopes' essay in the 1920 volume Control of Parenthood. It is a passionate plea for women to be accorded the knowledge of birth control to enable them to space their pregnancies for the health of their children and their own wellbeing, along with demands for better provision for the knowledge of, and treatment for, sexually transmitted diseases. I am also rather surprised to hear that Stopes ever had a passion for abortion, since she claimed that wider knowledge of birth control would eradicate the need for it.