Sir, - The privilege of having a weekly column means I don't normally reply to hostile or inaccurate comments on the Letters page. However, Ms Julia Heffernan of Life Ireland (August 11th) encourages me to break my rule. I can live with being patronised, or criticised, but I will not live with the implication that I invented facts on this most serious topic.
I trust in future we can avoid the trap of measuring the size of our respective sources, and focus instead on why blanket anti-abortion attitudes foster so exceptionally high a rate of late abortions for Irish women, and so fast a rate of abortion increase too.
Meanwhile, may I respectfully refer her to, among others, the lifelong academic and popular studies of Dr Derek Llewellyn-Jones, MD, MAO, FRCOG, FRACOG, and his publishers Faber and Faber, with reference to UK abortion experiences. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II awarded him an OBE for his work. - Yours, etc.,
Medb Ruane, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.