Mary Lou is out of step with SF voters on the referendum

ACCORDING to Mary Lou McDonald, her party and the electorate do not need to know the details of the abortion framework before the referendum. Sounds like a pig-in-a-poke scenario, which will be blindly followed by the faithful.

She is reported to have said that she is perturbed by the prospects of the dissenters using the term ‘abortion on demand’.

How else can we describe the intention to consider each pregnancy within the first 12 weeks as disposable? This mindset cannot be reconciled with the belief that each life is unique and precious.

Mary Lou was not troubled by the shielding of bullies and sex offenders by the republican movement. The tradition she purports to represent was framed by the men and women of 1916 who postulated that the loss of innocent life is to be avoided.

Yet there is no attempt by Sinn Féin to limit abortion.

The grassroots republicans I have met do not support the destruction option in all cases of unborn life within the first 12 months. I wonder do any of us know the real circumstances of our own conception and whether we were wanted?

DEREK TONER, Ballbriggan, Co. Dublin.

The end of balance?

NOW that equal allocations of time will no longer be required for a broadcaster to claim that they have been fair to both sides in the lead-up to the forthcoming referendum, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has removed one of the only objective indications that fairness and balance are actually being honoured by broadcasters (Mail, March 14).

In future, fairness and balance will mean exactly what broadcasters or, in the case of a dispute, the BAI, chooses them to mean, neither more nor less.

CLARA O’BRIEN, Charleville, Co. Cork.

The truth about Adams

JAMES Woods and Patrick Murray (Mail Letters, yesterday) want us to honour Gerry Adams. Surely they are very naive.

That man was a leader in the socalled republican movement that tried to subvert this State and murdered members of our gardaí and our Army with weapons supplied by Colonel Gaddafi. Better to honour the men who died in the line of duty defending our democracy against terrorism. PAT O’MAHONY, Dalkey, Co. Dublin.

Hawking was no genius

MARY Carr’s article on Stephen Hawking (Mail, Monday) surely demonstrates the gullibility of people since the beginning of the 20th century when it comes to science.

Following in the footsteps of Einstein and his ‘simple nonsense’, as one scholar described his theories, Hawking is now being credited with his ‘discovery’ of multi universes and the that matter can be created out of nothing.

The trick, it seems, is to think up stories that cannot be understood by anybody unless you get a salary for pretending to understand it.

That way you become a genius way above the intelligence even of the Mary Carrs who admitted in her article that Hawking ‘could only bring the masses so far along the road of enlightenment - without a level of scientific literacy on our part, his work was a mindbending concoction on formula and equations, obscure double Dutch’.

Hawking had no more insight into the stars than any one of us can see with our own eyes. REDMOND O’HANLON, Churchtown, Dublin.

Brexit bluffing

YOU report that Britain has agreed to a ‘legally binding backstop solution’ to guarantee no hard border (Mail, yesterday). I’ll believe it when I see it, because I can’t see the many Brexiteers or the DUP agreeing to stay in the Customs Union.

AIDAN O’SHEA, by email.