The Editor, Sir:

Thank you for the role you are playing in keeping the abortion debate in the public arena. I respectfully take issue with the cartoon published on 07/02/07 which in my opinion is not fair commentary on the position of the church. The inference is that the church is strident against abortions while at the same time unconcerned about the high murder rate.

I note that the pregnant person in the cartoon is not an adult female but a small child.

The press was nevertheless less than supportive of recent calls for legal reform which would institute zero tolerance for all levels of sexual violation of young girls. I submit that the issue of abortion and the murder rate are not unconnected.

The 1,000 murders and the estimated 22,000 abortions done annually in Jamaica - before 'legalisation' - merely represent different examples of the effect of a total disregard for the sanctity of life.

Since my public stance in this matter, several persons have expressed the view that free access to abortions for poor women is one approach to fighting both poverty and crime.

Systematic dehumanisation

In order for any genocide to be successfully perpetrated, history has shown that there must first be a systematic dehumanisation of the intended targets. This happened in Nazi Germany and in Rwanda in 1994.The deliberate misinformation that denies that the foetus is a human life could be seen in the same light.

The idea that some lives are not fit to be lived and should, therefore, be terminated did not begin with Adolf Hitler. This formed a part of the mindset of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, a major provider of abortions in the U.S.A. and elsewhere.

Today, in what John Powell calls "the silent Holocaust" , it is estimated that every two years the number of babies aborted in the U.S.A. surpasses the population of Jamaica; and the number "terminated" each month is more than the number of Tutsis chopped to death in Rwanda.

Words( and their normal meaning) often represent the first victims in the drive to institutionalise behaviour which would otherwise be morally reprehensible. One relevant example of this is the use of the terms 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice' to describe persons on either side of this issue. The opposite of life is not choice, it is death.

I am, etc.,

Dr. DOREEN BRADY-WEST

drbradywest@hotmail.com

29 Shenstone Drive

Kingston 6

Via Go-Jamaica