I was entertained by Danny Treacy’s letter on the abortion debate (October 11). If he has a complete unbroken map of human evolution he should present it to the Nobel committee. He calls for reason but performs non sequiturs with the agility of a flea. So let’s check out the logic of abortion.
Where did we get the notion that choice is an absolute right? Every day people die of cancer, in accidents and other ways they did not choose and have no control over. Choice is a relative concept that is limited by the rights of others. It is not absolute.
Why do we believe we have a right to choose twice? Except for rape the choice to become pregnant is exercised at the time of conception. It cannot be undone.
Why are the unborn non-persons? The time limits for abortion are expedients not principles. They determine when abortion is legal not why it is legal.
What distinguishes the unborn from others who have the right to life? Here are a few common arguments:
They cannot live independently outside the womb. Well, they are not meant to any more than an adult can live underwater. None of us is capable of an independent existence.
From the moment of conception a child will grow to adulthood barring violence, illness or accident. It just needs to be left alone.
They are not conscious or self aware. Please can all those who remember the moment they became self aware put up their hands? For that matter can all those who think they were the same person at 16 and 60 stop being so silly?
Life is a journey. Some of us get further along it than others. It is defined by its potential, it begins the moment that potential comes into existence and ends when further potential no longer exists.
What’s God got to do with it? Religious believers are not the only people who believe in human rights or the rule of law and who want to protect children in the womb.
Why is abortion a women’s rights issue? Half the children aborted are male and all of them have fathers. Nature has made females the hosts of yet to be born offspring. Motherhood is not a right – it is a privilege which should not be abused.
Why do we so often conflate abortion with gender equality issues like gay marriage? Where is the evidence that LGBT people are any more or less likely to support abortion?
We live in a world where, by and large, abortion is taken for granted. We are even seen as backward and uncivilised for not having it. In England and Wales about one in every six pregnancies ends in abortion, outnumbering all other causes of prepartum death put together. It has become a substitute for contraception. Not very civilised.
DERMOT McNALLY
Castlerock, Co Derry
Required viewing for those who endorsed repeal campaign in Ireland
Ihave just been to see a film in the Omniplex Cinema in Limerick. Firstly, I would like to thank the Omniplex for having the courage to show it, as the other cinemas saw fit to ignore it.
It took my wife and I a week to get tickets to see Unplanned as it was sold out each time we went. Most people will not have heard of Unplanned, as the mainstream media and TV have mostly ignored it.
It is of course an anti-abortion film based on the true story of Abby Johnson, the youngest clinic director in the history of Planned Parenthood in the US. There were protests in parts of this country by the pro-choice movement about Unplanned being shown at all. Censorship by those who no doubt complained about the Catholic Church doing the same thing back in the day.
This film should be required viewing for the famous names in show business who wholeheartedly endorsed the repeal campaign in Ireland, the newspaper journalists who wrote so many columns in support of repeal, the TV and radio hosts who were, let’s be kind, not unbiased, and of course the politicians who did most to ensure that abortion would be introduced.
I would like to also ask the same people to read a poem by Spike Milligan entitled Unto Us. Tell me you are not moved.
PAT DUFFY
Co Limerick
Unplanned is a must watch for our MLAs
IT may make a difference to my life economically, politically, socially but it won’t be a death sentence so I don’t think that Brexit merits another wasted second in my thoughts. However, I can’t stop thinking about the innumerable death sentences which will be imposed here if our non-operational executive fails to grasp the fact that some things are a great deal more important than the issues which are causing the present stalemate.
With spare time on their hands and sufficient remaining income, I suggest that they organise a private screening of the film Uplanned in Stormont and that all MLAs should be required to attend. If after that, they still can’t act responsibly, resume their roles as elected representatives and take charge of the laws relating to abortion rather than sitting on the beach waiting for the tidal wave of abortion on demand to hit our shores, they will be responsible for pronouncing the termination of an ever-growing number of unborn human beings.
MAIREAD McKEOWN
Dunmurry, Co Antrim
Absence of coverage of Israeli barbarity
For four months now we have watched extended television reports of riots in Hong Kong, where masked protesters have closed airports and subway stations, attacked government buildings and replied to police with bricks, petrol bombs and iron bars. The western world expressed outrage when one protester was shot and injured in the shoulder. The response of the EU was to express “deep concern”. China has now condemned France for its double standards, given it has had 12 months of riots by the Yellow Vest movement against the neoliberal “reforms” forced upon them.
Contrast this with the almost complete absence of television coverage of the nearly 200 unarmed marchers killed and thousands seriously injured by the Israeli armed forces at the boundary fence of the concentration camp where they have been incarcerated for the past 14 years, surrounded on land, sea and air by the IDF.
This barbarity continues every Friday after prayers but is virtually absent from our television screens. Why?
EUGENE F PARTE
Belfast BT9
