Sir, - On behalf of the Dublin Abortion Rights Group, we wish to express our support for the submission made by the Adelaide Hospital Society to the Government's Working Group on Abortion. We welcome the stance taken by the Adelaide Hospital Society, which recognises the reality that, in Ireland, an average of 125 women choose to have an abortion every week.
The Adelaide Hospital Society acknowledges that these women need support and medical back-up in order to ensure their physical and mental well-being. In submitting that abortions should be provided for in certain circumstances by the Tallaght Hospital, the Society is seeking to give women this necessary support and back-up, in the context of a comprehensive health service.
We in the Dublin Abortion Rights Group have also made a submission to the Working Group, in which we too called for abortion to be made available in Ireland through the health service. It is time that our legislators finally faced up to this issue, acknowledged the reality of abortion for Irish women, and provided for the necessary facilities to be made available in this country. - Yours, etc., Ivana Bacik,
c/o Law School, Aileen O'Carroll,
c/o Dept. of Sociology,
Trinity College, Dublin 2.