Dear Editor,

While I am not a member of Amnesty International, I would like to object to the letter by Eilis Nig Raollaigh of PRO, published last week. She joins the Catholic Church in condemning Amnesty for its recent policy change regarding abortion. Let us be clear; Amnesty International announced its belief that abortions should be available to pregnant women in cases of rape, incest or where the woman's life is in danger. This is the sane recognition that in certain specific cases, the life of the mother takes precedence over her unborn child. It is a recognition of reality.

To say that abortion is a 'human wrong' is worthless sloganeering. If a woman truly, for whatever reason, wishes to terminate her pregnancy, who are the Church or PRO to tell her otherwise? The Catholic Church in particular has done more to cripple and withhold women's rights than most, and clearly cannot claim the moral high ground here. Abortion is a deeply personal moral issue. If the Church truly professed any solid Christian ethics, it would let its voice be heard in a humble manner, and offer prayers and support to pregnant women, whatever they choose to do with their own bodies. Instead we get a lot of authoritarian rhetoric and very little else, as though the Church has never done harm to women or children.

Furthermore, despite organisations like PRO and the Catholic Church opposing a woman's right as a free individual to choose what happens in the context of her own body, it is estimated that as many as 45,000 women have travelled to the UK from Ireland for abortions since the late 1960s. How many foetus has our anti-abortion legislation actually saved in all this time?

These bodies serve only to punish those women who wish to have an abortion but must go into debt because of the cost involved in going to the UK. The fact is, regardless of our outdated laws, women will have abortions if they want to regardless of what Irish Law, the Church or PRO say.

Yours faithfully,

Paul Grealish,

Galway

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