Sir, - The Adelaide Hospital Society's submission to the Inter-Departmental Working Party on Abortion (which has been published recently) should be of great concern to the Department of Health, to abortion referral agencies here and to individual Irish doctors who are currently referring women to abortion clinics and hospitals in the UK. The Adelaide Society alleges major deficiencies (in addition to lack of counselling) in the care of Irish women receiving abortions, viz. a lack of gynaecological assessment or infection screening beforehand and a lack of post-abortion scans to determine whether or not "retained products of conception" are present.
One presumes that the Adelaide Society knows which hospitals and abortions clinics provide defective services. Should it not have brought this vital information rapidly to the notice of the Department of Health for urgent action by the Minister concerned? There is no indication that the Adelaide Society in its submission has done so. Perhaps it should make a public statement indicating precisely what it has done, of, if it has done nothing, the reason why. - Yours, etc.,
Ms M.P. Magrath,
Harlech Crescent,
Roebuck Road,
Dublin 14.