Leave decisions about women’s lives to women, not celibate clerics

SIR, Delegates from the Catholic Church’s hierarchy are calling on our elected representatives to ignore the public’s wishes for a referendum on the Eighth Amendment.

Let us hope those elected representatives keep in mind that this is the same Church that opposed the sale of tampons in Ireland; opposed the legalisation of contraception (and still condemns the use of contraceptives - though we do not often hear them going public on that one these days); also, opposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality; opposed the criminalisation of marital rape; opposed the legalisation of divorce; opposed the publication of reports into clerical sexual abuse; and, just two short years ago, opposed marriage equality. Not a great record on representing what is in the people’s best interests, particularly in women’s best interests.

For generations, from the humiliation of ‘churching’ to the barbarism of the mother and baby homes, the Irish Catholic Church has terrorised, tormented and attempted to control women.

Because of that Church’s influence on law-makers, for generations Irish women – non-Catholic and Catholic alike – have had to make difficult and sometimes dangerous decisions about their fertility and reproductive health in silence and in secrecy.

Who would you trust more to make the right decision for a woman, based on knowledge of her personal circumstances: a group of elderly or middle-aged, celibate archbishops and bishops or that woman herself ?

It’s time to trust the real experts on women’s lives – women. Time to Repeal the Eighth!

Sincerely,

Dr Sandra McAvoy Douglas Road, Cork.