Almost 40 UCC academics last night welcomed the decision to withdraw an invitation to British far-right leader Nick Griffin to take part in a university debate on free speech.

IT HAS been interesting to follow this week’s discussion on gender quotas in the letters column and to see the charge made that they are undemocratic or discriminatory.

THREE women made an eleventh-hour decision yesterday to register as candidates in the Clare constituency in an effort to “balance the ballot.”

WOMEN entitled to a legal abortion in Ireland cannot get one because of deliberately obscure anti-abortion policies, a leading human rights organisation has claimed.

THE matter of redress for women and children who were incarcerated in — and used as forced labour for the profit of — Magdalene homes must be kept in the public eye. The state must not be permitted to shirk its responsibility for ensuring that the individual cases of the survivors are fully investigated.

IN her letter (‘It’s time the state faced up to abortion realities’, July 30), Dr Sandra McAvoy backs the provision of legalised abortion in Ireland.

HOW ironic if, as Dan Buckley suggests (July 21), a European Court of Human Rights decision in the A,B and C abortion cases becomes Europe’s equivalent of Roe v Wade.

I WOULD like to thank Dr Sandra McAvoy (Letters, December 2) for bringing the August 2008 report by the American Psychological Association (APA) to my attention.

JAMES McGrath (‘Women not misled on abortion trauma’, Letters, November 24) may have missed the August 2008 publication of the most comprehensive examination yet undertaken in relation to the psychological impacts of abortion: the American Psychological Association’s two-year evaluation of studies published in peer-reviewed journals since 1989.

I AM afraid Nick Folley (Letters, June 12) is mistaken in the belief that “Irish law allows for abortion where there is a threat to the health of the mother.”

I DISAGREE with Maireád Scannell (Irish Examiner letters, August 17) who finds it incredible that no Dáil member condemned Mary Harney’s statement supporting emergency contraception for 11-year-olds at risk of pregnancy.

WE, the undersigned, wish to register our protest at the imprisonment of our fellow Irish historian, Fintan Lane, and join in the call for his immediate release.