What difference inside or outside the womb?

Dear Editor, In his book, The Origins of the Final Solution, Christopher Browning comments at pages 184 to 186 on eugenics which was advocated in Scandinavia, the US and of course Nazi Germany. Under the general heading of ‘Killing the handicapped’, he notes that the practice in Germany was relatively straightforward.

But in Germany, the handicapped included not only the Jews who National Socialism considered sub-human, but also Germans who failed to meet the tests set down.

But the crucial point here is that the life of the ‘handicapped’ began in the womb. It was a human life unless the scientists, politicians, philosophers and journalists decreed otherwise. 

So what is the difference in the life that exists say one week after conception, or which exists 24 or 36 or 2,000 weeks thereafter. And what is the difference where the serious handicap is found to exist in the womb?

Why is it all right to terminate a life in the womb but not outside? 

But I would not hold my breath while the Government Ministers and allied TDs think of an answer let alone bothering to publicise it.

Yours etc.,

Gerald Murphy,

Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.