Sir, - If any lesson can be learned from recent referendums, it is that the people can no longer be taken for granted.
Since its introduction, there was the perception that the recent amendment was motivated by politics rather than by concern for the right to life. Irish people are now having their own convictions on matters which previously were decided by the Church.
The referendum proposal was lost, in my opinion, because it was not driven by dogma, as heretofore, but by painful events and by the highlighting of individual cases of hardship to women in pregnancy; and because the Pro-life Campaign wilfully demonstrated no confidence in the Supreme Court and in our public representatives.
The result marks the real beginning of a pluralist society for its own sake and, for the individual, an exercise in the freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right. The responsibility now lies on the Oireachtas to legislate and face up honestly to abortion in certain circumstances. - Yours, etc.,
John F. Fallon, Boyle, Co Roscommon.