A chara, – It is to welcomed that Dr Conor O'Mahony recognises that "the likely legal impact of Monday's ruling on this side of the Border is somewhere between limited and non-existent" ("NI abortion ruling unlikely to affect Republic," Opinion & Analysis, December 3rd). However, he does seem to contradict himself somewhat in his article.
He writes that “the Strasbourg court has not found that there is a general right to abortion” under the the European Convention on Human Rights. But he later goes on to write that what he calls our “restrictive abortion laws” are impacting on “widely recognised human rights”.
The first point seems to be a legal one, that the European Court of Human Rights accepts that abortion is not a human right; the second an ideological one, his own personal opinion that it should be considered a right.
Obviously one cannot have a right to that which is not a right. Therefore it might be best if articles that make it abundantly clear that abortion is not a human right did not erroneously describe it as such. Indeed, it would be best not to describe it as a right in any article at all. – Is mise,
Rev PATRICK G BURKE ,
Castlecomer,
Co Kilkenny.