Sir, - The sole aspect of the Government's recent proposal on abortion actually requiring a referendum is the attempt to deny the right to life of women whose physical existence is put at risk by their pregnancies because of the probability that they will commit suicide if denied an abortion - a proposal soundly rejected by the people in 1992.
The Taoiseach (like William Binchy of the Pro-Life Campaign) tells us not to worry about the odd suicidal woman because she can always go abroad (read England) for an abortion. We (and they) are thus obliged to hope that the anti-abortion movement is not globally successful - at least until space travel becomes more readily available to pregnant suicidal women.
The Taoiseach's approach is a complete denial of responsibility towards any future Ms X or Mx C. It is truly amazing that the Fianna Fβil which is prepared to disinter and re-inter Kevin Barry to demonstrate its "republicanism" is the same Fianna Fβil that seeks to abrogate - to the old colonial master, no less - the duty of any independent republic to take care of its own.
The Taoiseach and the Pro-Life Campaign blithely accept that many Irish women will, and should, be permitted to travel abroad to terminate their pregnancies for a wide variety of reasons. However, they turn their backs on the most vulnerable women and girls in our society - the raped, the suicidal, the sick and the impoverished - for whom any "freedom" to travel is illusory.
Yet even this denial of responsibility is not enough for them: any woman desperate enough to terminate her own pregnancy is threatened with 12 years in jail, even where the termination arises out of a failed suicide attempt.
Is this the way Fianna Fβil intends to fulfil the promise of its republican forebears to cherish all the citizens of this nation equally? Is this the compassionate approach to abortion proposed by the Pro-Life Campaign? - Yours, etc.,
SΘ d'Alton, Palmerston Road, Dublin 6.