In an­swer to Fr Derek An­ton's let­ter com­ment­ing on a let­ter I wrote cor­re­lat­ing vi­o­lent crime to un­want­ed chil­dren and his "hor­ror" at my pro­pos­al for birth con­trol ed­u­ca­tion and easy ac­cess to le­gal abor­tions: The prob­lem is and al­ways has been that men, not women, have al­ways held pow­er both in the church and in the wider so­ci­ety and men don't get preg­nant and have to bear the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of bear­ing and rais­ing an un­want­ed child. If they did, I won­der what their col­lec­tive opin­ion would be, as the ma­jor­i­ty of women world­wide sup­port le­gal abor­tions.

I, how­ev­er, agree that le­galised abor­tion is high­ly con­tro­ver­sial and sub­se­quent­ly would nev­er be tack­led by any po­lit­i­cal par­ty so, liv­ing in the re­al world, could we agree that a bet­ter op­tion would be to add birth con­trol to the CDAP pro­gramme and have com­pre­hen­sive birth con­trol ed­u­ca­tion in all schools?

You see, Fa­ther An­ton, God cre­at­ed Adam and Eve and de­creed, "Go forth and mul­ti­ply," and as long as he con­tin­ues to cre­ate men and women over­flow­ing with hor­mones, men will do just that, and that was fine when there were on­ly Adam and Eve, but it is time for an up­date, and please don't sug­gest ab­sti­nence. So let's live in the re­al world and come up with re­al so­lu­tions.

In an over­pop­u­lat­ed world and a plan­et stretched to the ex­treme to sup­port life on it, could you imag­ine our predica­ment if birth con­trol was nev­er in­vent­ed and no abor­tion had ever been per­formed?So let's get re­al and come up with re­al so­lu­tions and please don't sug­gest we pray more; we have been pray­ing for over 2,000 years and the prob­lems have on­ly got worse.

Dou­glas Agos­ti­ni

Glen­coe