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I am writing with regard to the subject of abortion which has been in the news lately because of Doctor Allinson’s bill.

There has already been a misrepresentation of the facts in one of last week’s letters.

For instance it was implied that the HEAR campaign has few supporters and that they were mostly from ‘across’.

The person who wrote that was obviously not amongst the over 100 people who attended its launch meeting.

The writer did not have the courage to give his/her name. I disagree with Doctor Malcolm Hannan, who did give his name, but I respect the fact that he has always held the views he propounds and holds them as strongly as I hold mine.

When any discussion on abortion takes place, over and over again you hear the words ‘it’s a woman’s right to choose’, ‘it’s her body’.

Apparently a woman’s pregnancy has nothing whatsoever to do with men.

And this is usually said by women who call themselves feminists. I say ‘call themselves feminists’ because how is it equality if a woman has to deal with an unplanned pregnancy on her own?

That isn’t my idea of equality. She needs help to have her child and support it, not help to destroy it. She is already a mother.

I read with sadness the views of the teenagers who were interviewed in the Examiner.

They all spoke about the woman’s right to choose what she did with her own body.

They described the horrors of having to go to the UK for an abortion. They are right, it is a horrible ‘procedure’.

It destroys lives, and that’s why pro-lifers hate it.

We aren’t nasty, heartless people who just want to stop people doing what they want and make their lives miserable.

The point is, there are two people to be considered in an abortion, ultra sound scans show that very clearly.

There is a mother and there is a child. We genuinely care about the mother, and feel strongly that she should be given all the help and support she needs, but we simply cannot ignore the child in her womb.

That is what pro-choicers do.

Abortion destroys not only the life of that child but also – in a different way – the life of the mother, whatever she may say.

Mothers who have an abortion are not usually in danger of death these days, but whatever Doctor Hannan says, they are mentally affected from that day onwards.

He can quote all the statistics he wants, but with all due respect, he is not a woman, and not every woman tells all. However young they are, when they have had abortion, they have been mothers.

Many often regret their abortion and mourn the loss of a child for the rest of their lives. Some may become very ‘pro-choice’ and there has to be a possibility that they are seeking to justify what they have done to their child.

Abortion leaves scars that never go away.

Pro-lifers hate abortion because of what it does to the mother and because of what it does to a child.

Men are still usually the lawmakers.

They are now being called upon in Tynwald (OK there are exceptions) to once again deal with an issue which they probably feel has nothing to do with them.

They have good reason to think that. Men are constantly bombarded by angry ‘feminist’ women demanding their right to choose, and telling them that it is not their place to make decisions about laws on abortion.

One only has to read the tone of the letters, or listen to the aggressiveness of the ladies in the group calling for a change in our current laws to see that.

Strong as they want to be, most men have been brainwashed by ‘feminist’ women to think this way, because as any psychologist will affirm, if something is repeated often enough, dogmatically enough, it will eventually be accepted as fact, and I think this is what has happened with the issue of abortion.

Many older men are brainwashed by their feminist relatives, and young men are happy to be let off the hook.

Much easier for the girl to sort it so they don’t have to think about it isn’t it?

It may not be a subject one wants to talk about, but it has to be faced that there are many cases where an abortion, isn’t successful and the baby lives. You only have to look online. It can happen in a late term abortion and normally, if a baby ‘accidentally’ lives, the doctor will terminate the child’s life.

This happened to a woman called Gianna Jessen in 1977, and she is alive today because the doctor was late for work at the clinic and a compassionate nurse called for an ambulance.

In 2015 Miss Jessen addressed the House of Judiciary Committee in the USA.

The committee was investigating planned parenthood, who were selling babies’ organs, and this is what she said: ‘Do not tell me these are not children. A heartbeat proves that. So does 4-d ultrasound. So do I.

‘Do not tell me this is only a woman’s issue. It takes both a man and a woman to create a child. And to that point I wish to speak to the men listening to me: You are made for greatness, not passivity.

‘You were born to defend women and children. Not use and abandon us, nor sit idly by while you know we are being harmed. I am asking you to be brave.’

The Isle of Man is proudly separate from the UK. People are scathing when referring to the UK as ‘across’.

Yet we follow our Big Brother wherever he goes, just as Britain often follows the USA.

Roe v Wade in America changed the world as far as abortion laws are concerned.

It was that case which eventually affected the UK, and brought in the 1967 Abortion Act.

One of the most vocal proponents of both feminism and abortion at the time was a woman called Frederick Mathewes-Green. She later changed her mind about abortion and her views are worth considering (a link to the appropriate website is below).

‘One day, the tide is going to turn. With that Supreme Court decision 43 years ago, one of the sides in the abortion debate won the day.

‘But sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the grave.

‘The time is coming when a younger generation will sit in judgment of ours. And they are not obligated to be kind.’

We look back on the slave trade with horror at what humans could do to each other.

China is beginning to regret their one child (and enforced abortion policy) now that they see the results. If the tide does turn one day – how proud will our island feel that we meekly changed our laws just so we could be like everyone else?

How will we be able to sing truthfully the words of our National Anthem: ‘Thy Throne of Home Rule, makes us free as the sweet mountain air’?

Do we really have Home Rule? Are we really free?

As Gianna Jessen, abortion survivor, also says: ‘If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were mine?’

Susan Richardson, Belle Vue Park, Peel.

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A week ago Dr Allinson was granted leave to introduce a Private Members’ Bill to change the current law on abortion (Medical Defences Act 1995). This I understand will provide abortion on demand up to 14 weeks and up to 24 weeks under certain circumstances.

I sat in the two-hour debate and was very aware that the unborn baby was not mentioned at all except in Dr Allinson’s summing up when he referred to the foetus once.

When we talk about the foetus, it’s not just the group of cells some think.

It’s a living being: at six weeks, the baby’s heart is beating and the brain developing, at eight weeks the baby is moving around and lungs developing and at 14 weeks the baby’s brain impulses have begun to fire and he’s using his facial muscles and hair is growing.

His kidneys are working and, if you have an ultrasound, you may even see him sucking his thumb. Even at this stage, a female embryo will contain two million eggs in the ovaries.

A clump of cells? No, a developing baby that is dependent on his or her mother for survival.

An unplanned pregnancy isn’t easy and I believe it’s of the utmost importance to give practical help and support to the woman involved.

Both lives matter. We live today where our society is making equality a priority. The baby in the womb is a human being so where are his/her equal rights under the proposed legislation?

Margaret Newton, Cooill.

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May I reply to the letter from Mr Paul Kerruish-Kelly (Examiner, January 24).

EU as a herald/guarantor of peace? Is this the internal peace of Europe or peace between EU and external countries?

In either case, post WW2 peace has come about because of the appalling possibilities consequent upon all-out war in the ‘nuclear age’.

The balance of NATO and Russia with 7,000 warheads each has been enough, so far, to cool the hottest heads.

The EU is not significant in this peace matter despite the claims. As far as peace inside Europe is concerned, I see that the EU un-elected are talking of an EU army led by German officers.

Mr Juncker has also said that Brexit will result in ‘more war graves’.

Is this an indication of EU thinking?

Will this army be large enough to reinforce the EU policy internationally, whatever that policy may be, or is the EU army intended as an internal security force to be used against the citizens should they disagree with their unelected masters?

This is important as the size, structure and cost of this army depends on the reason for its creation.

On the Baltic States, do we really believe that they do not look nervously over their shoulders, but to the East. I agree they are unlikely to be worried about Nazis – a red herring (pun intended) intended to divert attention away from the real concern.

I carefully did not refer to Nazi or Germany in my letter as I was more interested in the principles involved than the personalities. The heading was added editorially.

I did not ‘attempt to draw parallels’ but I did quote demonstrable facts about 1939 and 2017 so I fail to see what the reference to ‘modern post-truth’ means.

Why are words like true and false or even lie not good enough for Brussels-speak? Works in our Law Courts. I would like to see each point I raised tested for true/false. Enough of this weasel slithering innuendo soundbite stuff.

A Eurocrat only last week was bemoaning that populism, which he did not like, was interfering with the orderly running of the EU and should be sidelined. I suppose this is a reference to Vox Populi which less pretentious souls call ‘the voice of the people’.

To most – I emphasise ‘most’ – of us in the UK this is a treasured concept. Universal suffrage morphed, slowly and painfully, out of Magna Carta which as drawn was only a forced agreement to allow the barons more freedom from the monarch when it came to taxing and bossing the ordinary folks about. The final element of universal suffrage, allowing all women the vote, was not with us until 1928, over 700 years after Magna Carta.

So if I feel passionate about defending the genuine democratic rights of British citizens from being swept away by EU diktat I fail to see it as a bad thing.

I am sure it is realised that the UK did indeed honour treaty obligations to Poland in 1939 by declaring war and sticking with the battle. Once war had been joined, however, matters such as reactions to Kaytn were not in our sole control.

Even admitting knowledge at the time would have blown our code-breaking capabilities and we could not do that.

It would have directly betrayed those brave Poles who risked all to provide us with equipment and mathematics to star the Enigma code breaks as well as throwing away our advantages.

In any case Katyn was well in the past by the time we knew about it, the evidence being literally dug up by the German army as it advanced towards Russia.

Katyn was a Russo-German crime and not relevant to this discussion.

Mr Kerruish-Kelly has firmly nailed his colours to the mast in respect of EU being entirely good and he is entitled to his opinion but not entitled in my view to rely on a non-democratic power block to disregard a referendum which is largely free of party political influence and is a prime example of real proportional representation. He lives and works part time in Germany and Poland and I personally feel no need to interfere with that.

He has though found his niche in the EU new order and lost touch with both history and current affairs at the same time?

He has regaled us with generalities and mis-information culled I imagine from a Brussels store of useful, if misleading, soundbites made available as fillers in otherwise dreary speeches. This method eases repetition so that listeners hear the same thing from many sources. This is designed to ‘prove’ veracity by repetition.

I would like to think he may still be able to see the legitimacy of views differing from his own but it would appear unlikely. We are at the point where the will of the majority needs to rescue us before it is too late.

Angela Merkel has in the past been very good for Germany and she has managed the skewed currency value well to give Germany a built-in advantage over the years.

Greece and other EU members have paid and still are paying the price of the EU trying to fit very different countries into a mould that really only fits Germany.

Her miscalculation over immigration has put her on the back foot and her day has probably passed. EU banking is not out of the wood and may yet implode.

The EU as presently constituted is not something to bet on in the long term.

It has no humility and no understanding of its own shortcomings and failings. It is aiming for absolute power and a lot of us know where that leads.

I do think that Germany since 1950 has been working on a reverse Clausewitz formula.

His original contention that war was merely ‘an extension of diplomacy’ has changed to ‘diplomacy is the logical extension of war’ – the only way, incidentally, if you happened to have lost the actual shooting war. So, peaceful?

Certainly but if pursued to the end results in a non-elected EU bloc, with the population locked inside legal, rather than physical, walls without any possibility of change – ever. Which was the result sought by the country that was the Germany of 1939. Only the marketing strategy has changed.

In short I do not see Mr Kerruish-Kelly has come up with a meaningful argument on any of the points raised, or indeed an acceptance of recorded facts.

The introduction of UKIP into the argument is desperation. The EU hates UKIP and in the interest of their EU-flavoured democracy they will not allow UKIP or any similar dissident group to sit in the EU Parliament in future.

Exclude contrary referenda, exclude contrary political opinion and Hello Supreme Soviet. In any case UKIPs quoted 0.2 per cent of UK seats is not the point – the UK referendum however is. I applaud UKIP as a catalyst and it has played a vital role. So two whole paragraphs from Mr Kerruish-Kelly making a non-point based round UKIP is not a good closing argument.

I trust the UK will, as before, survive as a result of waking up to the situation that has infiltrated us by stealth and deceit.

Having a reformed EU correcting its glaring faults would make for a better neighbourly existence for all of us. Jurgen Stark, ex-ECB and Bundesbank, has just raised the question of a two-speed Eurozone as a lifeboat. Time to think the unthinkable?

A K Webb, Onchan.

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The Isle of Man must keep its abattoir and prohibit the export of animals for slaughter.

Recently I wrote to the Isle of Man Government expressing concerns for the welfare of a truck load of sheep which were travelling on the Ben-my-Chree (January 6) when it was turned back from Heysham due to fog. The sheep were on the truck for 14 hours due to the unforeseen weather change.

he government did look into the matter and stated in their reply to me that ‘no compromise to welfare occurred’.

I cannot accept this statement as the sheep had no food or water for those 14 hours and it is proven that animals suffer distress on long journeys which is why the law states that animals can be transported for ‘up to eight hours’ under normal circumstances. Nobody is to blame because of the weather but it cannot be true that these sheep did not suffer.

Can you imagine being tightly ‘packed’ in a crowd and unable to move around, lie down or get a drink for 14 hours?

The Isle of Man government needs to take a stance and prohibit animals being transported off the island just for slaughter (as detailed in the Manx Independent dated January 26) is crazy when we have a perfectly good abattoir on the island.

Farmers on the island receive generous subsidies from the government (i.e. the tax payer) and the government should therefore be able to decide where animals are slaughtered.

The meat plant made a loss of £1,220,441 in 2015 reduced to £587,941 after payment of the government subsidy (the Manx Independent,January 26). Why are the government allowing some farmers to export their animals?

There is nothing to stop the government making it law that all animals being raised for their meat must be slaughtered on island and the meat exported if required.

The RSPCA state – ‘We believe all animals should be slaughtered close to the point of production, and we have for many years been calling for the replacement of long-distance transportation of livestock for slaugher with a ‘carcass only’ trade.’

One of the problems the RSPCA mentions is that transported animals suffer ‘mental distress, due to the unusual and potentially frightening sights, movements, noises, smells, unfamiliar animals and stockpersons they will encounter’.

Compassion in World Farming (a respected farm animal welfare charity who have been successful in many of their campaigns over the past 50 years) are calling for the end of all long distance live transport. They want animals to be fattened and slaughtered as close as possible to their place of birth and live transport of animal for slaughter to be replaced by a trade in meat.

‘Stop the Trucks’ is a European organisation campaigning for minimal journeys for animals destined for slaughter and they state: ‘Transport of animals over long distances for slaughter is cruel, inhumane and unnecessary.’

The Isle of Man could lead the way in farm animal welfare with regard to transportation and labelling its meat as such, would be a strong marketing point for many consumers.

Name and address supplied.