Right to freedom of expression somehow did not extend to anti-abortion campaigners

THE blasphemy bill proposed by Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has given rise to considerable comment in your news and letter columns with most, if not all, writers expressing concern over the effects of such a measure on the rights to freedom of expression in Ireland.

While not taking issue with such concerns, they appear to be in sharp contrast with what must have been a conspiracy of silence when people were being arrested in Ireland just a few years ago for exercising such freedoms.

I refer specifically to the arrest of members of Youth Defence – of which I have never been a member, though I am in agreement with its principal aim – for displaying images of aborted foetuses on the grounds that such images may have been offensive, even to those who approved of the practices responsible for them.