The attached letter appeared in The Irish Times (31st December 2014). The Second Look Project replied to it on 2nd January but The Times did not print it.

Ms. Conroy’s letter came amid widely publicised allegations that the 8th Amendment was responsible for the sad case of the pregnant woman on life support. Sure it was also responsible for the bad weather, the economic downturn and all other disasters that befall!

Ms Conroy was the original proponent of legally aborting babies in Ireland where the baby showed little likelihood of living outside the womb and later took a case to the European Court of Rights on the same issue.

Ms. Conroy’s proposal was to undermine the 8th Amendment by allowing the abortion of such babies in Ireland. She then claimed that women going to England to abort such babies are very distressed at being unable to bring the bodies back home for burial.

It seems schizophrenic to deliberately terminate a pregnancy (where there is no threat to the mother’s life) and then give him/her a respectful funeral.

I remember attending the Oireachtas Constitutional Review Committee in 2000 when that issue arose. The late Deputy Brian Lenihan asked the leader of the Islamic delegation if he would condone abortion where the baby might only survive birth for minutes or hours. The Islamic Imam replied that the baby should be allowed to live whatever time it had.

Killing a human being because it is considered that he or she will not live long anyhow, is a very dangerous precedent. Hospices and nursing homes are full of people whose life expectancies are low and they may also be an emotional and financial burden on their families and the State.

One must also suspect that the clamour to abort babies with “lethal birth defects”  (who will not survive nor be a long-term burden of care to their parents), if conceded, would inevitably lead to demands to abort all  babies diagnosed as “defective” who survive birth. Then the hunt would be on for a wide range of other disabilities detectable in utero. In  Britain babies are aborted for such easily correctable defects cleft palates.

Women  bearing disabled children who will not survive birth for long and those bearing disabled children who will survive, deserve the greatest sympathy and care but the unfortunate baby has a right not to be deliberately killed. Allowing babies the few minutes, hours or years of life allotted to them seems the best and most human solution for all concerned.

Ms. Conroy’s proposal is the thin end of the wedge for further damaging the 8th Amendment. It is constantly pushed by RTE and the print media and its spokespersons are well tutored, capable of pulling at the heart strings and being shamelessly emotive. But if their arguments are conceded, the dangers to the unborn, particularly the unborn handicapped, and even the terminally ill, are immense.