The news this week that a record number of British women are now using an abortion pill to terminate their pregnancy at home, should ring very large alarm bells for anyone committed to questions of justice and compassion.

Mal Fletcher

According to various news sources, the use of this pill, known as EMA (early medical abortion), accounted for nearly a third of the total number of 'terminations' provided last year by the UK's leading abortion provider.

In 2003 this organisation, known as bpas, provided 3,500 patients with the pill. The number rose to 10,000 by 2005.

The pill is administered to women in two stages, the first taking place at a clinic and the second in the privacy of their own homes. This, say its advocates, is part of its attraction - allowing a woman more control over a very personal procedure. It also, they say, gives a woman greater flexibility to fit the procedure into a hectic schedule.

I think personal schedules are the last thing we should be talking about with a procedure designed to end a human life.

What supporters don't tell us is that there are significant health risks to the mother - as there are with all abortions - such as haemorrhaging and lasting pscychological damage. In the US, the FDA is considering a ban of the RU486 pill because of safety concerns.

Just as worrying is the fact that more than 20 women in Britain have had later-term abortions because scans revealed that their unborn children had club feet. About one in every 1000 children in the UK is born with this defect so it is not that uncommon and it is treatable with surgery. Last year, two doctors even carried out an abortion of a 28-week-old foetus with a cleft palate, again an easily treatable defect.

There is concern that biotechnology may lead to 'designer babies'; but it's already happening via abortion.

Some will say that the whole issue of abortion is very private; a question that can be settled only by individual conscience and which is not the domain for public debate. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Laws are set in place to protect everybody in society and particularly its weakest and most vulnerable members.

Arguments continue to rage about when a foetus becomes a human being, even in the face of photographic evidence suggesting that babies are babies long before some pro-abortionists choose to admit.

One thing is certain, however. For all of our talk about human rights, individual freedoms and situation ethic, there's a growing sense of crisis today in relation to public morality.

People are concerned about rising crime rates and family breakdown. Voters are frustrated and angered by the lack of scruples shown by leaders in public office and juvenile delinquency is on the increase in many Western nations - leading to ASBOs and the like.

More than ever we need a set of moral values which are generally shared and honoured throughout the community. Morality like this doesn't come cheaply, however.

We need morality that's based on more than our fickle human tastes.