Sir, - Kathryn Holmquist's articles "Back in the hot seat" and "Cash is key in crisis pregnancies" (October 29th), refer to the recent appointment of Olive Braiden as head of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency.
It is clear from the comments of the pro-life caring organisations quoted in the article that they are unhappy with the whole concept. Ms Braiden has said she intends to promote information on "contraception". She wants to intrude into the role of parents in imparting sex education to their children.
In the recently-published Government proposal on abortion, it is redefined as "the intentional destruction by any means of unborn human life after implantation in the womb of a woman". This Orwellian news-speak would allow sex-education ideologies to push early abortifacients on children who are barely pubertal. The legality of the "morning-after" pill and the IUD would be fully regularised under this new dispensation.
At the same time the Government has set up a Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction, presumably to help people with problems of infertility. But birth-prevention pills and the IUD have been implicated in chronic infertility.
Besides certain common STDs lead to infertility, namely chlamydia, and gonorrhoea, and a recent report by the National Institutes of Health in the US has discovered that there is insufficient evidence that condoms inhibit several of the STDs, including the two aforementioned. It can't have escaped the notice of the average intelligent adult that there is no shortage of condoms in Ireland. It is reported, all the same, that the incidence of syphilis and HIV are of epidemic proportions.
In our compartmentalized and individualised world, we are, through our tax money, being cut out from reality. It is counter-productive to criminalise consensual adult fornication. Even if an absolute ban on direct abortion is achieved, it won't put an end to DIY abortion. Nevertheless, it would help to reduce the incidence of STDs, chronic infertility, and abortion considerably if the Government promoted as secular, this-worldly virtues, the Christian virtues of modesty, chastity, and marital fidelity.
It would also help if the law weren't wobbly on the question of early abortifacients, if hormonal pills were restricted to their therapeutic uses, and if the Government put a health warning on every packet of condoms: "Condoms prevent pregnancy most of the time, but don't inhibit several STDs, especially those which cause chronic infertility." - Yours, etc.,
SΘamas de Barra, Beaufort Downs, Rathfarnham Village, Dublin 14.