LETTER: Milestones of a baby's early life in the womb

SIR – Something glaringly obvious has been missing from all of this debate on the upcoming referendum; the mention of babies!

An unborn baby’s heart starts beating by three weeks. In the first three months, a baby can kick and jump. All the baby’s vital organs are formed.

We can see this plainly from a scan. A baby can even yawn and even suck his/her thumb. A human is alive and well.

Not once was there a mention of these major milestones of a child’s life at the Oireachtas Committee on abortion. The Bill Minister Harris has been ‘really looking forward to,’ providing for the complete withdrawal of legal protection from an entire vulnerable group of human beings, namely unborn babies. There's that repulsive word again; babies!

These are the hard, cold and absolute facts; if we do not keep the 8th amendment, our country will go from being a country that always protected and respected unborn human life to one of the most extreme and unjust abortion regimes anywhere in the world, more extreme than England’s abortion laws where one in every five pregnancies now end in abortion.

It would mean total and entire abandonment of the rights of unborn babies throughout the full nine months of pregnancy. It would quite literally mean a vote for abortion on demand up to birth. 

More cold and absolute facts from Dr Peter Thompson from England (who carries out abortions under the Abortion Act in England and who explained the abortion procedure in detail to the Oireachtas committee) are that in an abortion the baby is first paralysed with an injection by the abortionist to stop him or her from moving.

The second injection of poison is then given by the abortionist to stop the baby’s heart from beating. There you have the facts, the truth and reality of what a repeal would mean straight from the professional abortion expert.

Ireland is one of the safest countries in the world for pregnant women. Our wonderful doctors care intensely about the lives of both mother and baby. Now that you know the horrific facts let us keep it as one of the safest as it has always been.

Let us save the Eighth.

Yours sincerely,

Frances Kelleher,

Killarney.