Views on abortion issue

Dear Editor,

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said that we have to stop ‘exporting’ our abortion problem to the UK and elsewhere.

If we are to take him at his word, he obviously envisages us having exactly the same permissive abortion regime as what is currently available in the UK, as only then would there be no abortions available in the UK that couldn’t be accessed more easily at home.

And when you look beyond the pseudo-controversy about precisely what stage of development it should be suitable to end the life of a human being in the womb, to the Government’s proposed mental health grounds for abortion, the very ground under which the vast majority of the UK’s 200,000 abortions a year are carried out, then you realise that it is indeed a UK style abortion regime that we are being offered.

Isn’t it time that our Taoiseach, his government and opposition supporters were a bit more up front and honest about that?

Theresa Johnston, Crozon, Sligo

Dear Editor,

There has been another attempt to silence a cohort of the population in the abortion debate; men. If we should dismiss men from the abortion debate, then Leo Varadkar, Minister Simon Harris and Colm O’Gorman should stop their involvement in the issue too!

Maura McCaughey, Grange, Co. Sligo