Madam, – Kudos to Human Rights Watch for highlighting the continued shameful state of Ireland’s abortion policy (Home News, January 29th). The status quo is an act of cultural hypocrisy. For supposedly “moral” reasons we have the most draconian anti-abortion laws outside of the developing world. But knowing that actually enforcing these policies would have disastrous social and public health consequences, we quietly allow citizens to go abroad for abortions, as a kind of safety valve.
We pretend that the issue doesn’t exist so that we don’t have to engage in an emotive and difficult debate about changes that need to be made, or even acknowledge the concept of reproductive rights. We just fob the problem off on someone else. As usual, the middle and upper classes do just fine under this system of societal doublethink, while the poorest and most vulnerable are left at risk and forgotten about. A typical “Irish solution to an Irish problem”. – Yours, etc,