Pro-life lobby not manipulated by Church

According to John O’Hara (Letters, Jan 24), the thousands of people who attended the pro-life rally in Dublin last Saturday are extremists who are backed, if not manipulated by, the Catholic Church.

Let me tell him, as one of those who attended, that the rally was filled with ordinary, Irish people of every age and background, who travelled to Dublin at their own expense to exercise their democratic right to lobby, because they regard abortion as “a heinous crime”, and people who do not dispute a “woman’s autonomy over her own body”, but do not see such autonomy extending to the child she is carrying.

The rally attendees are people who are horrified at the barbaric reality that is abortion.