Issue of censorship is key to the wider abortion debate in Ireland

SIR, I think the issue of censorship is central to the abortion debate. More and more we are invited to not describe abortion or its effects because, to do so, may upset those who have done this. It is not clear, though, that silence is asked of those who would influence others to have abortions.

I dislike censorship, which is why I think it fair to ask your readers to google Roe versus Wade, for what is in that decision, and what it imposed on the States; and then consider why it appears so few people here in Ireland are permitted to know about it.

While they are at it, readers might look up a giant called Planned Parenthood.

Kerry used to resist things being imposed, but these days many in fine jobs like teaching, psychiatry, local government revenue and the like seem content to follow thought agendas driven and imposed by quangos with a pretended concern for liberty or equality or whatever.

The group think has affected even the priesthood and the nuns. I was in a coach pilgrimage to Iona and a nun supported something she called ‘a woman’s right to choose’. We actually got on fine after I held my ground, but how can one stay a nun and think that? (And what was she hoping to find on Iona?)

And yet the roughest young man knows the new child in his arms is a miracle, and one in which he had little enough input, which is why any talk of her owning her own body seems such a terrible deal for the young men of Kerry. My generation knew we don’t ‘own’ our own bodies, and we knew it because we weren’t in denial of obvious reality all around us.

I have no doubt about the terrible consequences in domestic life when the deepest instinct to protect innocent life is overthrown, and when the concept of chivalry is overthrown by hurtling terms at men like misogynistic or sanctimonious, or whatever. The words of Edmund Burke said it well: ‘I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.’

Sincerely Gerald O’Carroll, 8 The Green, Huntsfield, Dooradoyle, Co Limerick.