Sir, - There is an extraordinary unanimity among the editors and opinion columnists of Ireland's national newspapers on what is among the most sensitive and contentious issues facing Western society today: abortion. While the quality of Irish journalism and reporting is often to be commended, the type of debate fostered by Ireland's newspapers on social and moral issues is threatening to become a broken record of pietistic, self-righteous formulae.
For example, the liberal media plead compassion for the tragic case of the recent 13-year-old rape victim - just as they did in the X case - in a way that at least implies that the opponents of abortion couldn't care less about the girl who was raped. The view that abortion is a second violation on the girl and on her child rather than being in any sense a "solution" is not even presented for consideration. Journalists have been taking a high moral ground on this issue for years under a protective veil of "neutrality". As a matter of fact, abortion is an issue upon which nobody can be "neutral", since it involves the deliberate termination of a human life. To dub pro-lifers "fundamentalist" is simply a cowardly way of declaring that one agrees with legalised abortion.
Unfortunately, many journalists have the childish habit of painting their opponents with broad brush strokes such as "ultra-conservative", "fundamentalist" and "theological". The later abortion controversy has provoked a predictable knee-jerk media response which, under the pretext of "neutrality" of "choice", stifled meaningful debate by ruling out a priori as "fanatical" anybody who took an unequivocal position on abortion. Nobody in Irish society is served by this kind of moral and intellectual sophistry.
The media would do a huge service to themselves and to society if they started focusing on the issues at hand instead of making personal attacks on people who happen to hold a different view from their own. - Yours, etc.,
David Thunder,
Mount Prospect Avenue, Dublin 3.