Readers' Blog: Let’s facilitate women who want abortion
What a woman does with her body ought to be her own business and responsibility, and not the concern of any civil or religious power broker or control freak.
This approach by way of repeal of the Eighth Amendment would make a lot of sense for the following reason.
A study undertaken by the World Health Organisation recently found that the abortion rate amongst citizens of countries where this procedure was largely prohibited was the same as it was in countries where a liberal abortion regime obtained.
Likelihood, therefore is, that this parity occurs because of the availability of this procedure in countries adjoining the first mentioned category, such as that which exists in this part of the world.
The only obvious remedy for this absurd abnormality is to recognise the reality of it and to repeal the Eighth Amendment accordingly.
Our primary responsibility in life, as I see it, is not to go about overseeing the imposition of laws upon others that do not impinge upon ourselves, but to ensure that our own affairs are in order in every detail and that is a lifelong task that most of us are incapable of accomplishing.
Why in these circumstances would anyone want to make life for a handful of women intolerable by imposing laws upon them that are selective and at variance with what we would be likely to tolerate ourselves.
It is time, therefore, to facilitate women who want an abortion and to treat them with respect. It is also time to rein in the spurious agendas of the pro-life people.
Midleton
Co Cork
