Sir, – The question that ostensibly mystified the couple of hundred people at the recent “pro-life” demonstration in Dublin was why “so many” women chose to have an abortion. Apart from the fact that it’s none of their business, can I propose a simple answer?
Because they have the right to do with their own bodies whatever they choose.
Like what they can work at, what they can wear, where they can go unaccompanied, who they can fraternise with, who they can have sex with and who they can marry, the right to be able to decide to have children at a time of their choosing was the last and most difficult to establish. I accept it’s morally fraught for a lot of people but ultimately it has become a right for women in free societies everywhere.
Women will have the amount of children they want at the timing of their choosing because to impose otherwise is an unacceptable intrusion on bodily autonomy.
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It has taken a long time but recently the vast majority of fair-minded people unencumbered by patriarchal religious dogma have thankfully come to this position the world over. – Yours, etc,
John O’Donovan,
Mount Street Lower,
Dublin 2.
