The case of the 13-year-old who is now pregnant as the result of rape has propelled the issue of abortion back into the news. The liberal media establishment has not been slow to point out to us that the only proper response, the compassionate response, is to help the victim to have an early abortion.

A terrible decision for anyone to have to make no doubt (ritual hand-wringing, everyone) but, as one newspaper commentator put it, "No civilised society could countenance the prospect of a child victim of rape being forced by law to continue an unwanted pregnancy."

Everything looked as if it was moving towards a "civilised" solution. It seemed that the victim, the victim's parents, the Eastern Health Board and its medical experts were of the opinion that an abortion was what was required in the circumstances.

Then the parents claimed that they had never wanted an abortion for their daughter and that she did not want one either, and the case went to court, and now the media establishment warned us that "it would be unforgivable to turn a catastrophe for one family into a deeply divisive political issue, and sinister to use the plight of a 13-year-old rape victim for anyone's agenda".

No one has to turn abortion into a deeply divisive political issue: that's what it is, despite the attempts by the tender-minded among us to ignore it in the hope that it might go away. The question of who, if anyone, is using the rape victim's plight to further their agenda is interesting, but is not answered simply by being asked. There is more than one group in our society that has an agenda in relation to abortion.

Rape is as nasty and vicious a crime as one can imagine, its trauma well-nigh unimaginable and its effects, both long-term and short-term, incalculable. Once done, however one might wish it otherwise, it cannot be undone.

All we can do is to help the victim through her current crisis and to lay the foundations for her recovery. Those who sincerely wish to help the victim in this case can do so in various ways. Tangible financial offers of support have already been made by some and will no doubt be welcome. The media could play their part by respecting her privacy and by refraining from using her case to push their pro-abortion line.

There is a real danger in all the emotional hype surrounding this case that we will forget what the reality of abortion is, both for the mother and for her child. In the current case, abortion would be yet another traumatic event in the life of the already-traumatised rape victim, a trauma that has well-documented physical and psychological effects.

The choice between having an abortion and not having an abortion is between choosing to bring the pregnancy to its natural conclusion and choosing to interrupt it brutally by surgical means.

The reality of abortion for the child is quite simple. It is death, a death that it will suffer not for anything it has done, but for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the rape victim is innocent, as she assuredly is, is not her child equally innocent? Why should the sin of the father be visited upon the child?

There is as yet one actual victim in this case; there may be another possible one. The actual victim is 13 years old; the possible victim is 13 weeks old. We cannot undo the rape; we can prevent the taking of an innocent human life. If this bloodiest of all centuries has taught us any lesson at all surely it is that you cannot solve your problems by killing.

Ever since the legal mess left behind after the X case, there have been demands for a genuinely decisive pro-life referendum, a demand to which our politicians have so far been deaf. Now is the time for them to listen and to respond.

Dr Gerard Casey is leader of the Christian Solidarity Party