Anyone reading Martin Scicluna’s article on abortion (‘Conscience and choice’, April 3) might imagine that abortion is simply the moral equivalent of having a troublesome tooth pulled out.

It is science, not simply religion, that teaches us that human life is a continuum from conception to death and that the foetus, far from being simply part of the mother’s body, is genetically distinct from both parents.

From these scientific facts it follows that abortion is the deliberate destruction of human life at its most helpless, most speechless and most vulnerable.

Scicluna, like many other proponents of abortion, carefully avoids describing what actually happens during an abortion and what becomes of the ‘product of conception’, as abortion doctors describe the unborn child.

I would encourage readers to discover these facts for themselves and then decide whether they find Scicluna’s arguments persuasive.