A report in your issue of January 20 referred to the dissolution of a pact which it was alleged was supposed to have existed "between the moderate proand anti-abortion lobbies."
The purpose of this letter is not to comment on the existence or otherwise of such a pact but to ask what on earth a "moderate" view on a life or death issue such as abortion is meant to be?
It is common practice in the secular Press to refer to the two sides in the dispute: those who believe that direct abortion is wrong in all circumstances and those who believe that abortion is right in any circumstances and then conclude that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the two excesses (the Aristotlean Mean?). If a free Press had existed in Germany in the late thirties one can imagine the sort of journalism that would have reported Deitrieh Bonhoeffer's total opposition to the killing of the Jews and Heinrich Himmler's opinion that their total extermination was justified to purify the German race, and arrive at the conclusion that there was a middle or moderate view that killing some Jews in certain circumstances was justified.
Himmler cpuld moreover appeal to Bonhoeffer to show more tolerance; after all, nobody was forcing him against his conscience to kill Jews. On the other hand it was quite wrong for hint to try and impose his view on others.
Let the Catholic Press, at least, keep the issue clear. Abortion is about killing innocent human beings and is itself an extremist act of gross intolerance, which all people of moderate opinion will oppose outright, Geoffrey Walker Therese Walker Leicester.