A chara, - If there's one thing that can be said about pro-life people, it's that at least they know where they stand. The debacle which is about to unfold when the Green Paper presents pro-choice people with a number of options as to when exactly it is moral to kill an unborn child will ensure that the ensuing debate will be neither calm nor rational.
I have yet to hear a pro-choice person explain to me how it is that if they believe it is a woman's inalienable right to have an abortion, then why should it be limited to, say, rape or incest. If these people truly, honestly believe there is nothing wrong with abortion, then what is the problem with a free-for-all abortion on demand? Of course, if the converse is true, and they really do have reservations about abortion, then why allow it at all? Furthermore, their reluctance to deal with, acknowledge or even look at information revealing the true nature of abortion (usually dismissed as "propaganda") seems to betray a reluctance (or an inability?) to deal with a truth which is perhaps all too well known to these people.
It seems to me that the dismissal of pro-life people as abolutists is no more than a smokescreen to hide the fact that if pro-choice people were true to themselves, they too should be as absolutist as the radical activists allegedly representing their cause, who perhaps are far more absolutist than they would care to demonstrate. Tactics, and all that. - Is mise,
David Carroll, Castle Gate, Castle Street, Dublin 2.