Sir, - In reply to Fiona Neary of the Rape Crisis Network (June 5th), I wish to make the point that the Government has not overlooked the cases of pregnancy resulting from rape and incest in their deliberations on the abortion debate. The Attorney General has made public statements regarding the difficulty in legislating for abortion in the cases of rape and incest. Abortion could only be made available in cases of "alleged" rape and "alleged" incest because by the time the case would come to court the resulting pregnancy would probably have come to full term. Therefore introducing abortion on these grounds would be introducing abortion on demand.
But this is a legal argument and does not answer the terrible dilemma of those women who are pregnant as a result of rape. There can be no doubt that rape and incest are the vilest of crimes that can be committed against women. Women who have suffered the trauma of these experiences need care, understanding and on-going support. However there is no medical or psychiatric evidence that suggests an abortion for women who are pregnant as a result of rape is therapeutic. On the contrary, an academic study which documented the experiences of 28 women who were pregnant as a result of rape found that an abortion added to their trauma while carrying the baby to term was therapeutic, (D.C. Reardon & J. Makimaa 1992).
Society must put in place support structures that will help women who are pregnant as a result of rape and incest, to work through the trauma of their experience while at the same time coming to terms with the added crisis of the pregnancy. For the healing of these women there is no quick or easy solution. What we must avoid is offering them the hope that an abortion is one step towards a resolution of their trauma when the evidence shows that it is not. - Yours, etc.,
Julia Heffernan, Public Relations Officer, Life Ireland, Patrick Street, Cork.