Sir, – The essence of the abortion debate is not about an unborn baby, a foetus or an embryo. It is about the right of others to control how a woman deals with her unique ability to bear life.
The fulcrum of Ireland’s abortion debate is a nation being confronted with its cultural and religious abhorrence of women, for which, sadly, there is an abundance of incontrovertible historical and contemporary evidence.
The Eighth Amendment punishes women for being women, in a way in which no aspect of our Constitution punishes men. Irish society has shown only recently its willingness and capacity to unshackle itself from harmful and hurtful social morals, to hear its inner voice of fairness and reason, to look on individual experiences and struggles as a valid way of measuring who and what we wish as a people to be and become. Perhaps this generosity could now, at last, be extended to Irish women. – Yours, etc,
PATRICIA MULKEEN,
Ballinfull,
Sligo.
Sir, – It is telling that the letter from seven "Doctors for Choice" (December 4th), in which they affirmed their wish to "offer complete compassionate care in Ireland to all women and couples at one of the most traumatic times in their lives", made no reference whatsoever to the one patient with no voice of his or her own – the unborn human being in the womb. Whether that patient is described as having a "fatal abnormality" or a "life-limiting condition" is, in the final analysis, of secondary importance when his or her right to life itself is being threatened. – Yours, etc,
Dr MICHAEL D’ARCY
Edgware,
Middlesex.