Sir, - In support of the proposed deportation of a Nigerian woman, the Attorney-General argued that her unborn child was not a person and, therefore, had no legal personality (The Irish Times, January 9th). It is, indeed, highly significant that the abortion issue has now become linked to the plight of asylum-seekers in Ireland
Recently, I celebrated the funeral Mass of a child who lived only eight days after being born five months premature. The grief of her parents and family was not in any way lessened by the child's being at such an early stage of development. When she died, the baby was only the size of an adult's hand. This little child further reminded our local community of what abortion is all about.
It is certainly monstrous and illogical to suggest that the pre-born child is not a person. It is, however, perfectly understandable that the advocates of abortion will go to such great lengths in their attempts to dehumanise the person who is living and growing in his or her mother's womb. Likewise, the powers that be in this land are closing their hearts to the distress of our brothers and sisters who have come here trying to escape poverty and injustice.
What Pope John Paul terms "the unspeakable crime of abortion" has opened the floodgates, in modern societies, to a gross devaluation of humanity.
The unborn child, too, is our neighbour. On the threshold of the abortion referendum, we, as a society, must face the reality of abortion. After 14 days, the child's first completed brain cells appear. After 24 days, the baby's heart, already in the advanced stages of formation, begins to beat. Abortion is the brutal destruction of this amazing process which is God's gift of life to a human being.
The child in its mother's womb is a living and growing human being. He/she depends on the mother for life. So too, however, does a baby after its birth. Does such reliance make the baby any less of a person?
The abortionist's argument, therefore, about the moral status of the pre-born infant is fatally flawed. - Yours, etc.,
Father PATRICK McCAFFERTY,
Sacred Heart,
Belfast 14.