Mitchell calls on Fine Gael for `unapologetic pro-life' stance

Mr Gay Mitchell has called on Fine Gael to renew its credentials as an "unapologetically pro-life" party.

He also likened abortion to the terror of a concentration camp run by "learned monsters" and "skilled psychopaths".

Mr Mitchell, who was speaking at the presentation of Trocaire's annual development review in Dublin yesterday, said it was time "direct abortion" was confronted as an issue which ran counter to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Fine Gael TD for Dublin South Central related the testimony of a concentration camp survivor who witnessed "gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates".

He added: "The above quote in relation to the concentration camps could easily apply to the millions of abortions which needlessly take place year after year."

Members of the Oireachtas who were "pro-life" were being "taken for granted in a politically correct world which is gone mad", he said.

Mr Mitchell challenged Trocaire, the Catholic Church's relief and development body, and similar campaigning organisations, to deal with abortion.

"I hope that organisations such as Trocaire, which are much respected and are calm and constructive in their deliberations, will not leave the ownership of this issue to extreme organisations on either side.

"It is time that those organisations which are informed by `gospel values' deliberated on this important human rights issue."

Mr Mitchell said he had never before felt obliged to put on record his position on the right to life as a human right.

"I believe in live and let live. I do not seek to hold myself out as any more righteous than anybody else.

"But there are two views on abortion: one is that life begins at conception; there is another which supports the woman's right to choose. I am not associated with any organisation which has sought to campaign on these issues. I do not support anything which puts the life of the mother in danger. However, I do believe that I have to put my view on the record, and it is that human life begins at conception."

Fine Gael, he said, should realign itself to be pro-enterprise, pro-social justice and pro-life.

Asked what his agency's attitude was to birth control issues in the developing world, the director of Trocaire, Mr Justin Kilcullen, said the organisation was a Catholic relief agency and fully subscribed to Catholic social teaching.

This development philosophy was shared by all its staff.

At times, he said, Trocaire had experienced difficulties with the policies followed by some international agencies with regard to family planning issues.

Mr Kilcullen referred to "doubtful procedures" which he said were followed by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in its guidelines for dealing with pregnant women in refugee camps.