ONLINE POLL RESULTS: No to legalising abortion, readers say
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Of the 409 respondents to a recent OBSERVER ONLINE poll, 55 per cent said that abortion should not be legalised.
Forty-five per cent or 186 respondents were in favour of legalising abortion.
Renewed debate on reform of the country’s abortion laws is now before the Human Resource and Physical Development Committee of Parliament, which, on January 31, heard submissions from two impassioned individuals.
At the sitting 45-year general surgery practitioner and former consultant surgeon at the University Hospital of the West Indies, Dr Charles Royes warned against legalising abortions to accommodate inconvenient pregnancies and dismissed the argument that legalising it would reduce maternal death.
Christina Milford, head of the Pregnancy Resource Centre of Jamaica, cautioned against legalising abortion telling the committee that countries where abortion has been legalised have experienced an immediate increase in the procedure.
The committee was reviewing a private member’s motion tabled by West Rural St Andrew Member of Parliament Juliet Cuthbert Flynn, calling for Parliament to consider the recommendations of the 2007 Abortion Policy Group.
