Madam, - The telephone survey on abortion commissioned by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency claims that 64 per cent of the public regard abortion as acceptable in some circumstances (The Irish Times, October 17th).
Given the way the questions were framed the results are not at all surprising. The question dealing with abortion makes no distinction between ethical interventions in pregnancy to save the life of the mother and induced abortion, where the life of the unborn child is directly targeted. By ignoring such crucial distinctions the survey is effectively meaningless.
Those advocating abortion legislation seem intent on blurring important ethical distinctions. There is a fundamental difference between early delivery to protect the life of the mother (though the baby may not survive) and abortion carried out with the intention of targeting the life of the baby. Polls which take account of these distinctions consistently show pro-life majorities.
There is unease in pro-life circles that the CPA is spending too much time producing ideologically motivated surveys instead of introducing targeted policies to help reduce our abortion rate.- Yours, etc,
Dr BERRY KIELY, Pro-Life Campaign, Dublin 1.