Innocents die between extremes

IT has always struck me as rather odd: how can America’s gun-totin’ religious right be so opposed to abortion, yet so in favour of the death penalty and the right to shoot trespassers?

The secret, I believe, lies in the ability to dehumanise the other - not to see the other as a human being.

Donal Hanley (Irish Examiner letters, November 11) also notes this anomaly but fails to extend the same logic to abortion. He says: “Religious pro-lifers can’t give one reason against abortion... other than claiming that it is not part of God’s plan for us.”