GERALD MORGAN, FTCD,
A chara, - How right Mary Holland is (Opinion, February 21st) to draw attention to the silence of the Church of Ireland (my own church) in the present confusing debate on abortion.
With a few honourable exceptions, such as that of the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral on the sanctity of marriage, the Church of Ireland remains silent on the great moral issues of our time. We do not hear from the Church any public refutation of Mr Blair's repellent doctrine of humanitarian bombing. We hear no outcry about the wanton slaughter of sheep for economic purposes during the foot and mouth epidemic.
Instead, the correspondence columns of The Irish Times are filled with futile and intellectually anaemic musings on the lack of belief of the Dean of Clonmacnoise in the divinity of Christ (the heart and soul of our Christian faith).
Abortion is a difficult and troubling moral issue, and for my own part I am not in favour of it unless the life and well-being of the mother is at risk. But there is nothing to be said in favour of the social and moral abandonment by Irish governments of all complexions of the thousands of Irish women and girls who travel to England each year to seek abortions. Lepers were treated better in the so-called "savage" Middle Ages. - Is mise,
GERALD MORGAN, FTCD,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.
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Sir, - Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of arguments for and against the abortion referendum, your editorial attitude towards the issue appears to be curiously inconsistent.
Your first Editorial on the referendum (October 3rd, 2001) seemed to recommend a Yes vote. Headed "A Workable Proposal", it stated: "The Government, in short, is attempting to exclude the risk of suicide. The manner in which the Government proposes to do so, however, is calculated to garner the support of most reasonable people. . .The Pro-life Campaign seems to be on board. . .The referendum route is relatively conservative. It will not please the zealots on either side. But for the first time since this issue raised its head in the early 1980s, a sane and workable Irish solution may be on offer."
In the light of the above are we to conclude that The Irish Times has now done a U-turn and joined the ranks of the "the zealots"? - Yours, etc.,
Father TOM STACK,
Ramleh Park,
Dublin 6.
The Editorial of October 3rd was posited on the Taoiseach's ability to secure a consensus. - Ed., IT.
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Sir, - What would we think of a truck driver who saw a human body ahead of him on the road and drove right over it, simply because he was uncertain whether or not it was alive, but feared the consequences for his own life or health if he skidded in trying to stop?
Certainty, I am rather sure, is something that we were never intended to have about any human life, even about the precise moment at which it begins. In the Creator's scheme of things, is that really any business of ours, or even of the expectant mother's? But what each of us does know, without any uncertainty whatsoever, is that human life ends with abortion in every "terminated crisis pregnancy" (in the deplorable terminology that is in vogue).
What kind of equality would it be if the certain death of the child in an abortion were given less weight than the threat of an adult to take her own life (an adult being a person who has lived long enough to become pregnant)?
If one has the opportunity to vote against the taking of life, it is an opportunity to be grasped. Even if some circumstances remain in which the taking of life is not prohibited specifically, that does not provide the basis on which one's vote against the taking of life could ever reasonably be interpreted as a vote for the taking of life in some new or newly specified circumstance. Neither is one's vote invalidated in any way by the knowledge that thousands of one's fellow citizens are going abroad precisely for the purpose against which one is voting. - Yours, etc.,
FRANK FARRELL,
Lakelands Close,
Stillorgan,
Co Dublin.
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Sir, - Professors Anthony Clare and Patricia Casey say that "no evidence can be found unequivocally linking suicide to the refusal of an abortion", and that abortion is not "a psychiatric matter". I would like to point out to them:
1. That much of the content, speculations, theories and claims of psychiatry and psychology - as well as many speculative journeys into early childhood directed and encouraged from the psychiatrist's chair - similarly rest upon the lack of unequivocal evidence. How often can the criterion of "unequivocability" be properly applied in psychiatry, or psychology? Very infrequently, I suggest.
2. That simply because no evidence has yet been found, it should not be suggested that this therefore settles the matter. The point is that neither the two professors nor anyone else has the power to present unequivocal evidence that no woman in Ireland will in the future threaten to commit suicide if she is prevented from having an abortion. - Yours, etc.,
I. SHORTS,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
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Sir, - I listened to Mr Dermot Ahern say on the radio that vast amounts of literature in respect of the abortion referendum are to be delivered to every home.
I have been considering the abortion question for many years. I know how I intend to vote.
How do I save myself from receiving all the literature which I do not want and do not intend to read? - Yours, etc.,
MARJORIE HORGAN,
Wilton,
Cork.