Nasty videos

Deputies on all sides of the House were alarmed and disgusted last week to receive video cassettes at their home addresses which…

Deputies on all sides of the House were alarmed and disgusted last week to receive video cassettes at their home addresses which showed scenes from an abortion, as well as aborted foetuses, limbs and footage of protesters being arrested outside clinics in the US. Each of the cassettes arrived with no covering note, no title on the cover, no introduction to the video and no clue as to what it contained. It could very easily have fallen into the hands of children.

Although the credits at the end indicated that the cassettes came from an American antiabortion lobby group, there was no indication who had sent them. They were posted in Dublin.

At the parliamentary meeting FF deputy Conor Lenihan raised the issue of such dangerous non-sourced material being delivered to deputies' homes. Another FF deputy said privately he thought they were designed to stir up an anti-abortion debate during the presidential election. An anti-abortion group was this week protesting outside Leinster House, using lurid posters.