Sir, - Anti-abortionists claim that a fully human being exists at the instant of conception with exactly the same right to life as the Pope. It follows that directly to destroy even a fertilised ovum in the womb or in a test-tube is always murder. John Paul II dramatically says: "There is nothing to choose between legalised abortion and the Holocaust".
No wonder some activists are seeking a constitutional change to force all women to bring their pregnancies to full term, apart from a few sick women chosen magnanimously by these campaigners according to their own narrow view of ethics and religion.
Before this burden is imposed on Irish families, regardless of their wishes and circumstances, campaigners ought to answer a few basic questions.
If it is so certain that an actual human being exists at conception, why was this never defined as Catholic doctrine? Why, on the contrary, does almost the entire Catholic tradition, including Augustine and Aquinas, speak of the gradual humanisation of the embryo?
Since science shows that most early embryos naturally miscarry, how can we exonerate God from being the supreme abortionist - indeed, the perpetrator of unimaginable holocausts?
Since baptism is vital for salvation, why does God give no chance of heaven to the vast majority of (miscarried) human beings?
Since the stakes are so high, why doesn't the church make a huge effort to baptise every miscarriage and give it a Christian burial instead of doing nothing, so that each poor soul becomes, literally, a lost soul?
If countries such as America and Britain really do engage in an abortion-holocaust, ought we not to cease all dealings with them as we would if we learned they were sending Jews to gas chambers?
Since each year thousands of Irish women have abortions abroad, shouldn't Ireland, like West Germany in the 1980s, medically examine women of child-bearing age when leaving and returning to this country to check if they have committed murder?
If an ensouled human being exists at conception, how is it that some embryos later split naturally or are induced to split so as to become two or more ensouled human beings while some twin sets of fertilised cells fuse into a single individual?
Without convincing answers to these simple questions, is it morally right to forbid, say, a suicidal 12-year-old rape victim to have an abortion? If the C-case is anything to go by, most Irish people think it is not. - Yours, etc.,
Peter De Rosa, Ashford, Co Wicklow.