Madam, - Sinead Ahern (February 25th) takes issue with the recent Millward Brown/IMS survey published by the Pro-Life Campaign.
The findings revealed that 67 per cent support a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion but allowing the current practice of intervention to save a mother's life in accordance with Irish medical ethics.
Ms Ahern asserts the question is "confusing and contradictory and can only yield inconclusive results".
She continues: "The lack of clarity is reflected in the 19 per cent who felt unable to form an opinion on the question". In fact, the findings have remained remarkably consistent over the past four years and the 19 per cent recorded as "don't know" or "no opinion" is very much in keeping with most surveys on abortion, regardless of source.
In contrast, the Safe and Legal campaign poll findings cited by Ms Ahern make no distinction between necessary medical interventions in pregnancy and induced abortion, where the life of the unborn child is directly targeted. Yet this distinction is crucial to any understanding of what actually takes place.
The most recent UN Report on maternal mortality found that Ireland is the safest country in the world in which to be pregnant, safer than countries such as Britain and Holland, which allow abortion on demand.
The amazing advances in 4D ultrasound technology illuminate the reality that the unborn child is a unique, irreplaceable human being and not merely a "clump of cells". Likewise, the emergence of groups such as Silent No More, organised by women who regret their abortions, points to the failure of abortion to meet the needs of women.
The pro-choice argument that legal abortion "confronts the reality" of crisis pregnancy leaves far too much out of the equation. - Yours, etc,
MARIE McLEANE, Pro-Life Campaign, Gardiner Street Upper, Dublin 1.