From the pages of the South China Morning Post this week in 1976
The government reckoned without the strong opposition of respected medical professional Dr Harry Fang when it attempted to include therapeutic abortion in the permanent law.
The unofficial member of the Legislative Council did not mince his words when he spoke against it in the Legco: 'This section of the ordinance should never have been enacted in the first place because it is legally ambiguous, medically unsound, ethically questionable and socially unwise.'
Dr Fang recalled that when the section was first added to the principal ordinance in 1972, the then attorney-general had given an assurance that its purpose was simply to protect medical practitioners from legal action where an abortion was performed to save the life of the mother or to prevent her from being reduced to a physical or mental wreck.
However, he said, the legislation as enacted seemed to have gone further then was intended and did, in fact, legalise abortion generally.
Of the total of 1,771 abortions reported over the previous three years, only 30 were performed because of danger to life, and only three were of an emergency nature.
