Ireland's credit, not its 'shame'

Madam – The right to life underpins all the other human rights, yet this concept seems to be missed by your medical correspondent, Maurice Gueret.

For one who has taken the Hippocratic oath, he was strangely dismissive of life in his column last week headed 'Ireland's Shame'.

In writing about three women who aborted their babies who were 'destined for a fatal ending', he fails to recognise that, in hastening that fatal ending, those innocent babies were consigned to a terrible death. What had they done to deserve that? He doesn't even consider that question worth mentioning.

Mr Gueret regards these women as 'brave', but surely they would have been far more brave to allow their children even the short minutes or days of life they were entitled to, and the motherly love every child expects?

World War Two was fought to deny Hitler and his Nazis the right to choose who should live and who should die, as they sought to start the perfect race.

It's a strange fact of history that, less than 30 years later, the nations that defeated Hitler's ghastly plans introduced their own form of birth-selection through abortion.

It is to Ireland's credit – not shame – that it has not, as yet, gone down that road and legalised abortion.

Sean Ryan,

Dundrum, Dublin 16