Sir, It was on a flight out of Dublin a few days ago that I read Conor O'Clery's report of the controversy in America over "partial birth abortions". As I recoiled in horror from his description of what is involved in this "rare abortion procedure" I could only ask who, ever, would seek the "right to choose" this obscenity?
He described the practice in which a baby is delivered from the womb, feet first, but the delivery is interrupted briefly, just before the head emerges, to permit "suctioning out its brain". Partial birth? Certainly the death is not partial, or even impartial.
I could only wonder What is the point? Even at the trivial level to which this marks our descent, would it not be more efficient, more hygienic, and better clinical practice to deliver the baby whole? What is gained, and by whom, by this messy suctioning within the body of another human being? What would be lost, and by whom, if the killing were done after delivery, when it could be executed more cleanly?
Will there ever be an end to this stupid euphemisation of child killing, and, indeed, of all the other forms of homicide about which we read every day? Can killing be made less fatal by dressing it up in carefully camouflaged phrases?
What language will be spoken in the next world? Surely it will be a simple one, since it will be required only to tell the truth. It will not at all be adaptable to the self deceiving subtleties in which we are now submerged. There is at least the consolation that all those babies will have immediate fluency in the language of truth, having skipped the mamas and dadas who took such care to evade them. Yours, etc., Stillorgan, Co Dublin.