Only mothers have rights

On Saturday last, on Dublin’s O’Connell St, a young woman with a group seeking abortion rights offered me a leaflet.

I asked her “Do you believe any unborn children have any rights?” She blanked me. I support her right to make such a choice, but she approached me and I asked the question respectfully, so an answer was appropriate. I presume she would support Rachel Doyle’s belief that “Reproductive rights are human rights” (Irish Examiner, August 20).

There is little debate about the rights of unborn children and their fathers, if women are given the absolute right to end the lives they are carrying.Husbands consensually involved in the conception of a child will have no parental rights until the child is born. While not suggesting that married women in their thousands would decide to abort their children, under the “reproductive rights” ideology such a right exists. Who has rights other than the woman?