Crimes are crimes not simply by virtue of their documentation on a country's law books, but as legal theorist Sir Carleton Allen pointed out so many years ago, a crime is a crime because it consists in wrongdoing which directly and in serious degree threatens the security or well-being of the society.

If we accept the logic of this, it is not hard to appreciate the point that pills like Cytotec, the drug designed to promote the healing of gastric and duodenal ulcers, make as far as the abortion laws of this country are concerned.

According to the lead story in yesterday's edition of our afternoon publication, Chat! Cytotec was allegedly prescribed by one Dr Ian Vincent for a pregnant 15-year-old, reportedly for the purposes of terminating an unwanted pregnancy. As fate would have it, something went horribly wrong and the girl ended up in the Spanish Town Hospital bleeding profusely.

Consequently, Dr Vincent and the child's mother were arrested and charged with conspiracy, procuring drugs and procuring abortion. They'll be tried, and if found guilty, punished according to the relevant laws.

Now we fully appreciate that the law has to be applied in cases like the instant and we are not, in any way, suggesting that allowances be made for them.

However, we feel forced to question the practicality of our abortion laws in the face of the fact that Cytotec can, has, and is achieving the illegal objectives of many pregnant women who are able to obtain the drug, ostensibly to treat ulcers, but really to terminate unwanted pregancies.

And it is against the background of this and other realities that we are once again inviting the anti-abortionists, our legislators and the other players who will influence the direction that the existing law takes, to look at the issue from a more comprehensive, as opposed to a purely moral, perspective.

For it seems to us that the line between breaking the law in this regard and taking a practical and legally legitimate decision to terminate a pregnancy via drugs like the 'morning after' pill and Cytotec is very thin indeed.

And if it is that a practical and legally legitimate decision which could, on the face of it, spare this society the trauma of hosting yet another potential juvenile delinquent, according to the circumstances under which it is taken, easily amount to breaking the law, is it not reasonable to argue that maybe these laws in particular have outgrown their original objectives?

We need to be honest about this.
Can we really say beyond a reasonable doubt that the alleged actions of Dr Vincent and the child's mother fulfilled the criteria outlined by Sir Allen?

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