Sadly, Sylvana Bannon (‘Where are the pro-lifers in the migrants’ plight?’, January 7) chose to exploit the plight of the desperate immigrants who were trapped on a ship near our shores to rubbish pro-life activists with overpowering emotion.

She has, to put it mildly, been profoundly unjust and misguidedly judgemental, making such sweeping statements that one cannot help but wonder what her real agenda is.

Most pro-lifers, whether Catholic or not, by the very nature of their outlook on life, are generally coherent in respecting human dignity in all its stages. This is also consonant with the Catholic philosophy of life in every dimension.

If she was at all interested in taking the trouble to find out what pro-lifers really think and do, she would realise they have a strong opinion on every aspect of life, be it economic, environmental or familial. After all, life is a web in which everything and everyone is interconnected.

She should also realise that the involvement of most Christians in these different arenas is usually done without fanfare or publicity. They tend to follow the biblical imperative of ‘the left hand not knowing what the right hand gives’.

As for the gratuitous label of hypocrisy, it should be patently obvious that anyone striving to live up to high ideals is an easy target. The crook and the robber baron can very proudly be true to themselves as they have no standards to live up to.

I challenge her to specify when and where we have called women who considered or had an abortion “whores”. Not only do we not mock these women, who are very often left in the lurch by callous boyfriends and indifferent family members, but we offer them help and support when others only push them to what they consider the apparently easy way out of unwanted pregnancies by resorting to the violent option of abortion.

With a littler effort, the correspondent might discover that many pro-lifers are active on various fronts to enhance the well-being and health of women in helping them to make life-enhancing choices. She might even be tempted to join us in our work instead of hurling mud at what is a caricature of reality.

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