Too blunt an instrument

SIR, While the referendum question will be presented as a simple option of Yes or No, the complexity of the decision facing the undecided voters should not be underestimated.

The emergence from the shadows of the heart breaking individual stories of women and couples who have been forced by the Eighth Amendment to go through horrendous journeys to and from the UK with their hopes and dreams in ashes in a shoebox, have highlighted for many the wrongs this amendment has inflicted on Irish women and their families. The plight of rape and incest victims, impregnated against their will and denied by the Eighth Amendment the chance to right the wrong done to them is a strong compassionate argument.

However, the undecided voter has not only to see the blatant failings of the current legislation but must reconcile the fact that the remedy for these failings may not be perfect and the remedy will never conform to a universal case of one size fits all. Each private pregnancy crisis and trauma will need a private solution. The complexity of such solutions cannot be adjudicated by two lines in the Constitution.

Those of us seeking a Yes vote are asking the undecided voter to see the inhumanity of the current legislation and to see that the Eighth Amendment is totally inappropriate as a solution for the diversity of crises that occur in individual lives

Sincerely, Berniann Condon, Na Gleannta Theas, Dingle.