Madam, - Yet another reason to vote against the citizenship referendum. The Master of the Coombe maternity hospital, Sean Daly, has gone on record (The Irish Times, April 23rd) to say that nearly half of the pregnant women presenting at his hospital within three weeks of giving birth are actually Irish citizens. Yet Mr McDowell has declared that any non-national women presenting at maternity hospitals late in pregnancy are doing so purely to "abuse" our citizenship laws. How dare he make the arrogant assumption that these women are driven by the sole motivation of making their children citizens?
Clearly women, both Irish and non-Irish, have many different reasons for arriving late in pregnancy at maternity hospitals - because they have just moved to Dublin from elsewhere in the country; because they have a crisis pregnancy, etc. What happened to our sense of compassion, or to the practice of giving pregnant women the care they need without judgment or demonisation?
Our lawmakers once sought to prevent pregnant women and girls from travelling outside Ireland. Now Mr McDowell is trying to keep pregnant women out of Ireland. He must be stopped. - Yours, etc.,
SÉ d'ALTON, Palmerston Road, Dublin 6.