Latent morbidity after abortion.

SIR,-Therapeutic abortion is now one of the operations most commonly performed in the U.K., and it is right that the short-term and long-term hazards should be fully explored. Unfortunately, the report by Margaret and Arthur Wynn, of which you write so eulogistically in your leading article (3 March, p. 506), presents no new data, and its only true contribution is polemical. Dr. D. M. Potts (24 March, p. 739) has already shown that the interpretation by the Wynns of the risks of subsequent ectopic pregnancy, low-birth-weight babies, and congenital malformations were erroneous. Similarly Mr. A. D. R. Ogborn (14 April, p. 114) points out that the Wynns have misquoted and misunderstood the findings of the 1958 British Perinatal Mortality Survey. Unfortunately, both these criticisms apply equally to your leading article. The Wynns have published a report whose skeleton is a selected collection of excerpts from the medical literature clothed with the flesh of emotive argument. This is a justifiable activity in the politics of persuasion, but your uncritical leading article gives it the implied authority of the medical establishment, and this is exactly how it has been interpreted in the national press. Since notification began in 1968 nearly half a million women have obtained abortions in this country, and large numbers of them have become unnecessarily alarmed by the unfortunate publicity given to this biased publication. It is because we are seeing such patients that we write this letter.-We are, etc.,