I hope abortion won't become an election issue. What's needed here is cool debate so that we may arrive at the best possible conclusion. That won't be easy when opinions seem to be polarised. The pro-lifers want no abortion, the pro-choice lobby wants no restriction. Most of us, I suspect, stand somewhere in between. We respect a woman's right to choose but we care about the unborn child when it has reached a stage where, if it were safely delivered, it could survive. Interviews in the magazine Cosmopolitan put abortion into the political arena. Charles Kennedy, himself an expectant father, wanted a reduction in the time limit from 24 weeks to 22. Michael Howard went a little further, down to 20 weeks. Tony Blair wanted no change. All these opinions are honourably held, but this is too big a question to be left to three men probably divorced by age and status from ever having to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy. Heaven forbid that we should return to the age of back street abortion. Remember that terrible scene in the film Alfie when one of Michael Caine's dupes goes to a dingy basement to have the baby he rejects aborted? But many people believe there are instances where abortion is the best option for mother and baby. Of course, it is an issue that most concerns women, although I've had many letters from men agonising over the dilemma. It was pressure from women which got abortion legalised in the first place and women who accepted a reduction from 28 to 24 weeks in 1990, when modern medicine became capable of saving seven-month foetuses. Now, with 39pc of 24-week premature babies surviving, it is surely time to look again, although we should recognise that there are exceptional cases where rules should be relaxed for humane reasons. The huge rise in abortion in the under-25 age group needs inspection too. Abortion should never become just another means of contraception. There are possible after-effects to abortion that do not occur with the condom or the coil, depression and difficulty in future conception among them. Those risks are worth taking in many instances but should never be undertaken lightly. So let's let the party leaders off the hook and take this matter into our own consideration, making sure that early termination and access to contraception are freely available before we restrict other options. ********** Help services in need of cash aid There are some things we take so much for granted in this country that we never question how they're financed. The Citizens Advice Bureau is one, Relate another. For 13 years we have taken the Missing Persons Helpline for granted but, barring a miracle, not for much longer. Unless the Government or some other benefactor kicks in £300,000, in addition to normal funding, the line will close down and thousands of families searching for loved ones will lose out. The helpline depends entirely upon donations from charity and some Government funding, but they need more. Several unnamed charitable trusts have promised to help, but only if the Government kicks in too. I hope and believe it will, because the line takes a huge burden off the shoulders of the State. To date it has helped 60,000 families and I can't even contemplate next Christmas - the time when teenage runaways traditionally want to make contact - if there's no MPH. Many runaways believe they'll be rejected if they phone home. But they will phone an intermediary to pass on a message. So let's hope the Government comes up trumps. While I'm on the subject of helplines, last week the charity Sane was forced to lay off 120 of its helpline volunteers and may need to close the helpline altogether, although it exists to help those battling mental illness and their families. Last year the Department of Health withdrew the £1m it paid Sane to run the helpline. Why, when every week Saneline handles 1,200 calls from desperate people, a third of them referred to Sane by the National Health Service? ********** Comic good I'm disappointed at criticism of Comic Relief. Of course it isn't perfect. I yawned in places, winced in others but that was more than redeemed by pictures of what Comic Relief is doing to help Africa's needy - and Britain's too. The triumph of the night was the greatest bit of feelgood I've seen in a long time - Peter Kay's magnificent march on The Road to Amarillo. I want the DVD for Easter so I can play it whenever I need a boost. Where else could you get Ken and Deirdre, Paul and Heather, scores of other famous faces, Ronnie Corbett falling down a bank and a thrilling tune as well? If you haven't seen it treat yourself - and help Comic Relief bring smiles to faces who haven't had much to smile about to date. ********** Search for the truth I always believed something bad happened at Deepcut Barracks, but I was never sure whether it was murder or a case of young people being driven to suicide. The other morning, on the Today programme, I heard enough to convince me it was the former. The mother of Private Gray spoke with clarity and passion about her son's death. She also revealed huge discrepancies in the investigation so that I marvelled that anyone could refuse a public inquiry. The parents are entitled to closure, the public are entitled to the truth. ********** Jamie's not in it for money Up to now I've tolerated Jamie Oliver as a refreshing, if mouthy, young chef. Good, but not that good. No longer. Since watching his crusade to improve what schoolchildren eat I've decided he's a hero and probably an idiot to pit himself against such entrenched hostility. At one point he was reduced to tears but he battled on as schools, reluctant at first, acknowledged that children behaved better and learned faster when they ate proper food. In one school they'd even been able to dispense with the asthma inhalers that are costing the NHS a fortune. What's in his crusade for him except tears? Not cash because he could make ten times the money if he concentrated on his restaurant. He's doing it because he cares, and the sooner we listen to him and stop shovelling muck into our children the better. If you didn't see him demonstrating mechanically extracted "meat" you were lucky! ********** Is it just me or do some of you also yearn for the royal wedding and the election to pass into history so we can all get on with something else? ********** Terrifying fact on cannabis I never succumbed to the notion that cannabis was "harmless." I risked scorn to denounce it and I despised those celebrities who boasted that they were regularly stoned in the Sixties and "it never did me any harm". They were ignorant of the fact that today's skunk is as far removed from Sixties grass as I am from Mother Teresa. Skunk contains 20pc of THC (the hallucinogenic ingredient). Grass contained three per cent. In the Sixties it was late teens and early twenties who indulged. Today children as young as 11 have the habit and the rate of cannabis smoking among our 15-year-olds is the highest in Europe. In addition the price of cannabis has almost halved in the last six years, so it's more and more available to the very young. Some dealers are willing to sell playground fixes for pocket money. Psychiatrists say that seven in 10 patients who come to them with psychotic symptoms have a history of cannabis use. If that doesn't scare you it terrifies me. So do the more subtle effects it may be having on the young brain. The World Health Organisation says that by 2020 mental health will be our number one problem. The sooner we all start to take cannabis seriously, the better. * Denise Robertson cannot enter into any personal correspondence. | 
