‘Abortion is murder’ — an absurd theory

RORY O’DONOVAN (Letters, January 8) is mistaken to think Louise Caffrey (Letters, December 29) has failed to recognise the ideological grounds for opposition to the pro-choice position.

I assure Mr O’Donovan that everyone is well aware of the inescapably misogynist nature of the religious institutions that put the “firm belief” into his anti-choice position.

The ideological grounds in question are the grounds of the Catholic school he attended, the grounds of the church which he frequents, the grounds of Golgotha from which he derives the principle of noble suffering which he has effectively prescribed to women in crisis pregnancy. His insistence on using the term “murder” to describe abortion is a disingenuous but all too common equivocation between the two terms.

It is not only politically incorrect, a point to which Mr O’Donovan himself admits — it is also logically incorrect, a point to which “firm belief” is oblivious.

This equivocation reduces the former to absurdity and grossly mischaracterises the latter. Human life does not begin at conception — cell division begins at conception. That which is only potentially a person cannot itself be a person in actuality.

One cannot say that abortion is murder without reducing to absurdity what it means to be a human — the insubstantial notion that humanity just pops into existence when the soul supposedly enters into the foetus at the moment of conception. From where, we might well ask?

I argue that the meaning of moral values are ultimately derived from our ability to empathise with others.

In the case of abortion we are only capable of meaningfully empathising with the woman who finds herself pregnant without her reproductive consent.

To suggest otherwise is a theological fiction.

Seferin James

14 Cedar Square

Stillorgan

Co Dublin