‘No uterus, no opinion’ is one of a range of mantras thrown around in the abortion debate. Martin O’Brien – ‘Assembly must demand return to stop abortion on demand’ (August 30) – looks male, clearly has an opinion and is definitely not afraid to share it.
I am reminded of a great autumn day out around Downpatrick with a group of overseas junior doctors some years ago. Our friends from Pakistan and India collapsed in laughter as they saw colleagues foraging through hedgerow branches. Brambles and blackberries are part of the Irish experience, as celebrated in the famous poem by Seamus Heaney. I think it was Francis Bacon who said “knowledge is power”. Knowing the difference between edible fruit and poisonous berries is important.
Does abortion thrive in western countries because the mass of the population are oblivious or indifferent to the witness of science? Pregnant women who have seen the heartbeat of their offspring on scan are said to be much less likely to opt for abortion. Is abortion a risk factor for future premature deliveries? Is abortion connected to future suicide, depression and self-harm? Radical abortionists might propose complete decriminalisation to term. Conservative religious people might favour personhood from conception or implantation. Their viewpoints can only be critically appraised by the population if the media start to explore early pregnancy development in words and pictures.
My suspicion is that some form of relative ‘news blackout’, especially around pregnancy images, may exist where the unborn are concerned. In an age where science is king, and there is an obsession with medicine-health, it seems surprising that the mainstream media give so little space to colour images of early pregnancy.
People who have worked as GPs or community nurses in Great Britain may well recollect encountering women who struggled to recover after abortion.
I have yet to come across a single woman who changed her mind about an abortion and expressed regret at the birth of her child. “Knowledge is power”. Does it suit abortion industry providers to keep women (and the public) in the dark about what really happens during chemical, suction or surgical dismemberment abortions?
DR TJ HARDY
Belfast BT5
When it comes to education poverty is elephant in the room
Rachel Saunders, education campaign director at Business in the Community, comments that poorer pupils are nearly twice as likely to leave school without good English and maths grades as those who are well off ( August 23). When it comes to education, poverty is the elephant in the room and this poverty is not, as Boris Johnson once said, a result of poor people not being as smart as rich people but as Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, pointed out a result of deliberate government policy choices which were punitive, mean spirited and callous, when many other options were available.
Research has consistently shown that the most powerful predictor of academic achievement is the socio- economic status of a child’s family and the second most important predictor is the socio-economic status of the children in their classroom. The UK has one of the most socially segregated school systems in the developed world. According to the OECD, the more socially mixed a school system, the better it performs for all its students. The UK is the only region in the developed world in which grandparents have better levels of literacy than young adults. Here, in Northern Ireland, social segregation is made even worse by academic selection at 11. More than 20 per cent of schools in the secondary sector have 50 per cent or more of their pupils on the free school meals register and it’s these concentrations of poverty that are the primary cause of our long tail of underachievement.
When it comes to education it’s OK for the DUP to have their own opinions but they’re not entitled to their own facts.
JIM CURRAN
Downpatrick, Co Down
Distorted democracy
Despite the ramifications of Brexit and the BBC incessantly distorting the facts, most of us go about our daily business, unaware of what has become, in regard to the perilous state of the so-called UK union, a national crisis. As a majority our indifference opens the door to the flag waving, placard carrying throng assembled around parliament building, dedicated to political power and goaded by Jeremy Corbyn ‘to take to the streets.’ To help further their cause they are given an unrestrained voice for their invective by the grand British broadcasting corporation who like them are against any proposal to fulfil the wishes of over 17 million people who democratically voted to leave the European Union.
We believe in democracy they bellow. They believe in no such thing, but only in an oligarchy of political activists and zealots, aided and abetted by the BBC, who allow them to impose their left-wing views on the rest of us by their ability to manipulate the airwaves.
It is now time for the government to set up a committee, however interminable, to investigate this ramshackle British broadcasting corporation which has forsaken impartiality and by their overtures to the mob are no longer fit for purpose.
WILSON BURGESS
Derry City
Euphemisms mask reality
To “end a pregnancy”, as Sarah Holland euphemistically puts it, is to terminate a child – not a “fertilised egg” (September 2). No man or woman has the ‘right’ to make such a ‘choice’.
Pro-abortionists need euphemisms to mask the reality of what happens during abortion. A child of 12 weeks, 28 weeks (a seven-month-old pre-born boy or girl) is not ‘a fertilised egg’.
Sarah Holland also resorts to the usual propaganda that abortion is a matter for “girls and women”. Every child has a father. Both male and female children are aborted. Abortion, therefore, is not a ‘feminist’ issue.
The inconvenient truth for pro-abortionists is the humanity of the person whose life is deliberately destroyed, whose most fundamental right is extinguished.
Those of us, both women and men, who know this truth, will never cease from bearing witness to it.
FR PATRICK McCAFFERTY
Belfast BT12
Precious green spaces
Belfast’s Lord Mayor John Finucane recently launched a consultation on the city’s Open Spaces Strategy. It says their vision is to have “high quality open spaces recognised for the value and benefits they provide to everyone who lives in, works in and visits our city”. It also states that there is limited green space in the city and pledges to “protect and improve existing open spaces”. If this is the case why are the residents of Glassmullin Green in Andersonstown having to occupy the site to protect it from unwanted development? Surely this open green space should not be under threat? If Belfast City Council are serious about their strategy they should be supporting these ratepayers who are protecting one of the city’s precious green spaces.
F MAGUIRE
Belfast BT11
