NEWS of the abortion of a twin in Britain was greeted with anger by Irish anti abortion groups yesterday.
The British Medical Association's head of ethics, Dr Vivienne Nathanson, said the case was abound to cause "instinctive horror" but insisted it raised no new ethical issues. Asserting the right to life of the aborted twin, Dr Ciaran Craven, an adviser to the Pro Life Campaign, said there was also a utilitarian" argument against aborting one. The surviving child would be exposed to the possibility of suffering from "survivor guilt" a phenomenon "very obvious during the last war when some people couldn't understand how they had survived the Holocaust and relatives had been sacrificed".
The BMA attitude "demonstrates the lack of respect for human life which exists in contemporary society", the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children Ireland said.
The society said it "states categorically that murder is murder whether it be the wilful killing of Bosnians or Serbs or that of an unknown, unborn child". What is happening "is the inevitable consequence of the right to abortion on demand".