When children are in the car, Kathryn Holmquist wants to tear anti-abortion posters down

Babies will die. The words speed by. White on blue, tied to a lamppost. The words hit viscerally. Images arise like sceptres. Pain. Tiny pink forms. Blood. Lost babies.

I keep driving. There it is again. Babies will die.

Innocence. My womb, protecting innocence. Hopes and prayers that the baby will be okay.

Keep driving. Another one. Babies will die. The babies I wanted, the babies I feared. The times pregnancy was a joy. The times pregnancy was fraught.

Keep driving. Another lamppost epistle. Babies will die. By now, it is a taunt. A torture. My adrenalin is rushing and my emotions are ragged.

Keep driving. Another poster. Babies will die.

And all I can think of is the pain that this latest referendum campaign is causing - not just to me, to everyone who has ever had to deal with the reality, rather than than politics. I think of teenagers made pregnant through incest. Women impregnated through rape. I think of other women for whom pregnancy occurs in less dramatic circumstances, but still causes tremendous distress. Women happy to be pregnant at first, then learning the father doesn't want the child. Women who have worked to achieve, realising that pregnancy may crash-land a hard-won career.

I think of the 40-year-old agonising over whether to have amniocentesis - and if she discovers that the child has a genetic defect, what will she do? It is too close to home, this experience of continuing alone, experiencing the tragedy of miscarriage as a reprieve.

I see it again: Babies will die. I want to tear every poster down. How dare these people? This is emotional terrorism.

I'm being hurt by this. And just as I am feeling as angry as I think it is possible to get without driving the car into the verge, my children pipe up from the back of the car.

"Babies will die, Mum... Are we going to die?" Then I get really mad. How dare these people try to hurt my children? Media terrorism at its most refined: a message on a lamppost. This isn't about abortion. This isn't about politics. This is about people so insensitive that they can plaster posters all over the place, knowing that these posters will disturb young children.

These same people want to protect the unborn. The ethical question is so obvious it reeks: are the unborn more important than the born?

Maybe I can excuse the people who put up these posters. Maybe they are so involved with the world of the intellect, that they have completely lost touch with reality. The reality is that children as young as four will read these posters and be upset by them.

Children don't know that the abortion referendum campaign is about political point-scoring, about a government that wants to be re-elected in two months' time. They see one message: babies will die.

"Babies aren't going to die, don't worry it's okay," I say lamely. How can I hope to contradict the message - white letters on blue, more real than my reassurances to my children?

"But the poster says babies will die. Who are the babies, Mum? Why are they going to die?" A million responses flick through my mind. Yet I know that no response will be good enough. Three children, aged four, six and nine. Three different ages and stages. Three different responses required.

My nine-year-old needs to have the fact of the referendum explained to her.

She's too mature to escape the matter that abortion is an issue. The younger ones need reassurance more than anything.

How do I reassure them? Babies die every day. I can only assure my children that they are safe, and the babies they know are safe. I have to tell them that babies die only when they are very sick, when doctors' treatment and parents' prayers are not enough. Babies dying is a rare occurrence, I reassure them. I won't even get into the issue of unborn foetuses with the younger children. Because the posters are, actually, referring to foetuses, not babies. Nevertheless, it's the question of babies dying that I have to address.

I'm angry. This has got nothing to do with the referendum and the issue of whether suicidal impulses are grounds for legal abortion in the State. That's for you and I to decide privately. What I'm angry about is our hypocrisy regarding the issue of keeping children safe.

These posters are a form of abuse, but we adults have become so desensitised to our own rhetoric that we don't even consider the effect the words may have on children - real, alive, born children.