Abortion law in Ireland: what happens next?

SIR – I fear Judith Woods (Comment, May 25) is fooling herself if she believes that liberalising the abortion law in Ireland will only give rise to a few “necessary” procedures.

Once permission is given, the floodgates will open. I’m sure that most of the British MPS who voted in favour of the Abortion Act in 1967 would have been horrified had they known that this would result in the deaths of nearly eight million babies in the womb in the first 50 years following the passing of the Act. Sue Mawson

Gurnard, Isle of Wight

SIR – Judith Woods claims that weekly mass attendance is as low as two per cent in some Dublin parishes. While that may indeed be the case, it is not true of the island as a whole. Weekly mass attendance is over 20 per cent: in the Republic alone, more than one million people attend mass each week.

She proceeds to confuse the question of abortion with that of gender relations; “the morality card”, she asserts, is used to “curb women’s basic rights in every religion”. She misses the point that opposition to abortion is based on a profound belief, held by many women as well as men, in the most basic of rights: the right to life and to protection in the womb.

C D C Armstrong

Belfast

SIR – At least the Irish have the sense to vote the right way in a referendum. Bill Jolly

Lancaster

SIR – It is said that Theresa May is unable to lift the abortion restrictions in Northern Ireland (report, May 27) because of opposition from members of the DUP on whom she depends to remain in power, having lost her overall majority at the last election.

Two questions arise from this. How long before the people of Northern Ireland demand the same abortion rights as their counterparts in the Republic; and who really governs – our Prime Minister, or the DUP? Valerie Crews

Beckenham, Kent