Nobody thinks like that; everybody, practically speaking, regards abortion as an evil which, like many another evil, would not be a feature of a better world. The real issue is whether the practice is, or is not, possibly a necessary evil in the real world in which we will continue to live.

This issue is, I think, subject to the same ethical balancing act as (say) war. Just as horror stories about war - true though many of them are - are no argument for the self-awarded pacifist stance, so horror stories about abortion - true though they often are - are no argument for the self-awarded 'pro-life' stance. Horror stories are no substitute for serious ethical enquiry; they are a powerful motive for conducting such enquiry with an eye to identifying real effects flowing from real causes. The relevant ethical enquiry is 'do we really need to legalise something so intrinsically objectionable as abortion?'

My answer is 'yes' because amateurish 'moonlighting' abortions are often very dangerous to the woman and, what is more, they may well be attempted for the amoral reason (so rightly rejected by Archbishop Winning) - that of mere convenience. To legalise abortion is not to do it - it is done anyway - but to try to do it safely and after due consideration by parties both interested and disinterested acting within the law.

The law, and the ethical enquiry upon which its provisions should be based, is not unchangeable and its continuing reform, in the light of technical advance, should be a continuing preoccupation of people who are actually pro-life. A corollary is necessarily the ready availability of contraception as the obvious preventive measure. The alternative is the back-street abortionist for the poor and the discreet cover-up for the rich to the accompaniment of counter-productive megaphone moralising from a simplistic check-list of do's and dont's.

Let us keep our ideals; I will settle for a world without procured human abortion if it is also a world without rape, without seduction and without contrived ignorance of contraception. Meanwhile the real world muddles on leaving purity to the purists.