What we really need is better adoption law – not abortion

IN response to your lead story headlined ‘Rights body calls for legalised abortion’ (January 28), how can Ireland be violating the right to “freedom from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, life and equal protection under the law” when we are one of the few countries left protecting those very rights?

We have the correct laws in place already in that if there is a real and substantial risk (including suicide) to the life of the mother, then an abortion it is legal.

I understand there are cases of rape/incest where a woman feels abortion is best for her own mental wellbeing, but these cases make up just 1% of the 46 million abortions performed worldwide each year. How can anyone have the “right” to kill their own child?

Why is Ireland being targeted as a country that abuses human rights when we are the ones protecting the most vulnerable of all – the children.

What we need is better adoption laws. If a woman doesn’t want to keep her child there are many others who would give anything to have what she has. We also need better sex education in schools and better awareness of different forms of contraception. This debate has reached the point where it has become blatantly clear that abortion is being used as a form of contraception.

This is completely unacceptable and needs to be stopped. I am not saying these things on religious grounds as I am not religious. I’m open-minded, and still a teenager.

I don’t believe that as modern women we should be “empowered” by our so-called right to choose because it is obvious even to the most unenlightened people that these are uninformed choices. We need an immediate national debate on this issue – one of the few the Government has gotten right. If they legalise this inhumane and cruel act, then I (and I’m sure others with me) will have lost whatever shred of respect we have had for them.

Rebecca Hegarty

Hollyville Mews

Grange

Cork