Sir, - Is there intelligent life in the offices of The Irish Times? I ask the question because the reaction to Archbishop Connell's recent statements on Humanae Vitae has been more akin to that of Pavlov's dogs than to those of homo (or even mulier) sapiens. Knee-jerk responses were clearly present and were doubtless taken by some as reassuring evidence of higher neurological function. However, primitive reflexes may persist even in the absence of cortical activity, and are not necessarily a sign that rational thought processes are taking place.
Your columnists, to a man and more particularly to a woman (with the notable exception of Breda O'Brien), have predictably precipitated an emotional maelstrom which has obscured some rather interesting questions raised by the archbishop and which merit some rational discourse.
For instance, with regard to IVF, there is the question of the distinctly altered relationship between the parents and their so-called "spare" embryos, the necessary by-products of the technology. What of those embryos which are not reimplanted and therefore not given the chance to grow into a "wanted" child? What kind of relationship exists between parents and their frozen embryo? There must be something different about these "planned" children, otherwise so many of them would not be routinely destroyed for the sake of the ones who are chosen to survive. These are vital questions we must answer if our society is to be a humane one, but on this occasion they are questions the media have not allowed us to ask.
None of your columnists has referred to the archbishop's remarks on the pressures applied to women to use contraceptives. This is a great pity. The fact that contraception places the onus to avoid pregnancy squarely on the women is an unspoken rule that is plain to see even in the advertisements by pharmaceutical companies in medical journals. Germaine Greer refers to this exploitation of women by commercial interests in her book The Whole Woman, reviewed by your own journalist, Mary Maher, last Saturday. Archbishop Connell has had the audacity to confront the social forces which undermine the authentic freedom of women, and The Irish Times, that great champion of women's rights, has entirely missed the point. - Yours, etc., Dr Orla Halpenny,
Queen's Park, Monkstown, Co Dublin.