Mrs Griffin (May 31) accuses me of "glibness" because stated that "it is too easy to carry a banner and walk in a procession." Granted that some people suffered expense and inconvenience to attend the antiabortion meeting — but weigh that in the balance against what is suffered by someone who does not resort to abortion as the solution of hei. problem.
Even at the more reprehensible level — i.e. where the pregnancy is the result or promiscuity, we still have a young frightened, despairing girl — facing the possibility of being unable to work and keep herself and her young baby for several months. She has to face either the responsibilities of parenthood without the support of a man, or the heartbreak of giving her baby away. Whose suffering is the greater?
Mrs Griffin also says "not necessarily everyone can give two hours a week of voluntary work." If there are people who find themselves unable to spare two hours out of the 188 in a week to make life more bearable for their fellow human beings then this is a serious indictment of the form our Christianity has taken. St John says: "Whoever does not love his brother is not of God."
Can we truly love the brother
we see rotting on the pavements of our big cities, or in the rat infested, damp ridden hovels that act as homes for some of our people, or in the South Ockenden, Farleigh and Ely hospitals — and do nothing about them? Should we not remember that even Christ needed help to carry His cross?
No Mrs Griffin, unless we can have the imagination to see the awful predicament of some of our fellow-men and feel constrained to do something about it, our anti-abortion pressure, necessary and laudable though it is, becomes only an intellectual solution to a practical problem. As such it lays us open to the derision of oUr opponents who can rightly regard us as hypocrites and bigots.
(Mrs) Barbara Creedon 41 Willow Avenue, Swanley, Kent.