Sir, - Alan Clinton (June 14th) and John F. Doyle (June 18th) are both right in their comments on my letter of June 13th. Due to the two points mentioned in my letter - that UK clinics expedite abortions, especially late ones, for people with foreign addresses, and that they do not verify addresses - the fact that 6,338 women last year gave Irish addresses does not mean that number of Irish women attended. The real total could be 1,000, or 10,000, or anywhere below, between or above those figures. In short, the clinics' figures are totally unreliable.
Besides, we need not use them. Using them is like saying that X number of people go abroad to launder money in ways illegal here, so therefore we should consider legalising those methods to spare them the cost of going abroad. The real question is: do those ways merit Irish legalisation? Similarly, the abortion question is: should our prohibition of unnecessary induced abortions (i.e. those not necessary to save the mothers' lives) be relaxed to permit such abortions for broadly economic reasons? To consider that, we do not need to use UK figures, verified or unverified. - Yours, etc.,
Joe Foyle, Sandford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.