THE EDITOR Sir:

We have a moral dilemma. Shortly after my church brother was crippled by a gunman during a robbery, we were advised during a church service that the gunman had been shot dead by the police. We clapped and cheered. It mattered not that the gunman was in his bed when he was shot, or that he was killed under the direction of a policeman suspected to be involved in a number of extra-judicial killings. This was another dead scumbag and Jamaica was better off without him. And boy, did it feel good.

The average Jamaican condones the preliminary dispatch of alleged murderers. We even think that if you are caught in the presence of a gunman he deserves to be killed on the spot. It's not that we think murder is right, it's just that we have been overrun by murderers and there is no other efficient way of dealing with the problem. So the end justifies the means. There has to be a deep sense of satisfaction when the gunman who killed your wife, or father or friend, is gunned down by the police. So what if it is murder? It is justice. We have a moral dilemma.

Women who have unplanned pregnancies share this dilemma. According to Tara Clivio, writing in The Gleaner of February 15, abortion is justifiable because we are saving unwanted children from a life of hurt on the streets or in poorly run children's homes, or it will prevent the woman from getting married or from advancing her career.

We can conclude from her argument that our society would be better off if we had aborted all the street boys and those children currently resident in children's homes. Also, if all single women had aborted their unplanned pregnancies they would now be happily married with fulfilling careers.

Clivio, in trying to defend the indefensible sounds quite murderous. Why not just kill all the street boys tonight? A bullet to the head would not be too expensive. And some canisters of Zyklon B - used by the Nazis on the Jews in the death camps - should be able to take care of the residents of the children's homes.

Shapeless mass

Oops! I forgot that a pregnant woman does not have a boy or girl person in her womb. It is just a shapeless mass of tissue that looks like a large blood clot, akin to a parasite. And life has not begun yet because it does not look like a person - according to Mutty Perkins. It is just a blood clot inconvenience.

The truth is that by the time most women realise they are pregnant at six weeks, the baby has a head, eyes, hands and feet. It is a person, and it is alive.

If, as in the case of a gunman summarily executed by the police, we think that murder is justifiable because the woman's right to choose is more important than the life of her unborn baby, let us be honest, accept that we have a moral dilemma and stop trying to justify abortion with murderous arguments.

I am, etc.,

CAPT. JOHN RICHARDS

jaybeeare@hotmail