Sir, - I am a Columban priest working in Japan, where every year millions of unborn children are killed. In my talks and discussions about the sacredness of life, I have always been proud to present Ireland as a country where it is unethical for a doctor to perform an abortion, and yet Ireland continues to be the safest place in the world to have a baby.
What a shock to see the Medical Council of Ireland betray a tradition that has up to now been a guiding light for the whole world.
If this goes ahead the whole field of obstetrics and gynaecology will be off limits to every Catholic nurse and doctor, and will be left in the hands of those who care least for life at its weakest. Unless I am mistaken, the first principle of medicine is: if you cannot help your patients, at least do them no harm.
As Chief Seattle wrote so many years ago to the President of the US, this is "the end of living and the beginning of survival". If Ireland is to "live", we, the people of Ireland, need to wake up and counter the forces among us that are bent on the destruction of life. - Yours, etc.,
Father Harry O'Carroll, Missionary Society of St Columban, Navan, Co Meath.