Sir, – I take serious exception to the comments made about me by Breda O’Brien (Opinion, July 27th). Yet again she has used her Saturday column to launch a tirade against any legalisation of abortion. Her constant crusade to portray all those who would like to see sensible reform of our highly restrictive abortion law as “militant pro-choicers” has become very tedious. But in this case it is important to set the record straight.
However Ms O’Brien and her fundamentalist anti-choice allies may try to twist the facts, the tragic death of a young woman in London last year after leaving the clinic where her pregnancy had been terminated should raise serious questions about Irish abortion law.
For any compassionate person, it should raise the obvious question why a woman whose pregnancy poses a serious risk to her health should be forced to travel abroad for a medical procedure available in every other European country. Indeed, it should also raise the question why 4,000 women a year continue to travel to Britain for abortions.
Ms O’Brien criticises me for failing to call for an immediate investigation into the Marie Stopes clinic where the termination in this case was carried out. Perhaps she missed the report that investigations are already being carried out by the British authorities? She and her allies have been running a sustained campaign against non-directive pregnancy counselling agencies such as the Irish Family Planning Association for some time now, but even they cannot ignore the bigger questions about our abortion law raised by this case.
For far too long they have successfully persuaded our legislators to collude in the hypocritical pretence that there is no abortion in Ireland. The week after the welcome passage of the Protection of Life Bill, it is time we started talking about the reality of abortion for Irish women. – Yours, etc,
IVANA BACIK,
Seanad Éireann,
Leinster House,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Breda O’Brien (“Will nothing cause pro-choice people to question abortion?”, Opinion, July 27th) starts by writing, “Here I am wearily writing about abortion again”. She finishes as wearily with: “For militant pro-choicers, do potential threats to women’s lives only count if they serve to smooth the way for the introduction of abortion?”
May I suggest her weariness is akin to that of a frustrated teacher whose scolding is getting nowhere because her pupils’ moral – ie, what’s right and wrong – thinking differs from hers. Although she never says so explicitly, her Catholic moral thinking makes her pity pro-choicers as we Catholics pity serious sinners of all sorts. Since pro-choicers don’t think that abortion is seriously sinful, they logically ignore what she says. It would help, I suggest, if Ms O’Brien were explicit about the basis of the pity that she feels, and if our Catholic bishops were also. – Yours, etc,
JOE FOYLE,
Sandford Road,
Ranelagh, Dublin 6.