STEPHEN REDMOND SJ,
Sir, - Ivana Bacik (June 7th) accuses me of lack of compassion, of "condemning all women who have or have had abortions" I certainly strongly disapprove of and abhor what they do or is done to them in so far as it means the deliberate destruction of unborn human beings. (I would say that in very many cases the deliberateness comes far more from others than from the women themselves). Such disapproval and abhorrence are quite compatible with compassion for and understanding of the women involved.
Women in pregnancy should not have a monopoly of our compassion. The abortion-threatened children need and deserve compassion too - and (dare I say it?) justice.
Ms Bacik criticises my "execution" and "major monster" as "extremist language". She may very well be right. But with the deliberate destruction of unborn children being euphemised as "termination" and "treatment" and suchlike, some "extremist language" in the opposite direction is understandable, perhaps at times even necessary.
She says: "Happily the majority of Irish people do not share his fundamentalist views and have voted to retain the X-case ruling in law." If she is thinking of the recent referendum, this statement is not sustainable.
Only a minority of the electorate voted. "The majority of Irish people" (of the electorate) stayed away. The referendum was lost by only about 10,000 votes - less than 1 per cent of the total vote. Because of the split in the pro-life movement, part of the No vote came from pro-lifers (no lovers of the X-case ruling) who felt that the referendum anti-abortion proposals did not go far enough.
These pro-life No votes may have numbered many thousands. It is at least very probable that a majority of the minority who participated in the referendum were pro-life voters (both Yes and No and all happily sharing my "fundamentalist views").
There is no clear message from the referendum result to legislate on the X-case ruling. There is no legislation message at all from "the majority of Irish people" who did not even vote. - Yours, etc.,
STEPHEN REDMOND SJ,
North Circular Road,
Dublin 7.