Sir, - Kare Breivik suggested (October 22nd) that ova and spermatozoa are also life-forms. They don't go anywhere on their own, and "Equal Rights for Spermatozoa" would hardly draw the same support as the old 1913 suffragette slogan in Sandymount, "Up With Petticoats, Down With Trousers".
As convenient a point as any other to reckon as the start of human life seems to be that at which sperm meets ovum. Each contributes 23 chromosomes to form a unique genetic pattern, for a process. A DNA pattern with upwards of 3 billion components - and it doesn't change, it doesn't get any more human as it proceeds; the process is life.
The pattern survives the process. The process may end any time, but only in death.
If it is the case (and one is told that it is, and that this goes for rape victims too) that, when a mother seeking abortion finds support and is encouraged to change her mind, she comes to feel differently and the child is a source of nothing but joy, then the only argument can be: how can society provide that support? Certainly the worst argument is - they do it abroad so it must be right. - Yours, etc.,
Sydney Bernard Smith, Dundalk, Co Louth.