On July 20 the Express published a letter of mine titled "Right case for an abortion". I stated it is an act of gross inhumanity to allow a raped child of 11 years to carry to term the child conceived by that act.

In response, A L Nunes of Diego Martin (Express, July 25) contends that "any raped 11-year-old would never consent to having an abortion once she understands fully what an abortion is — the willful killing of an unborn baby. Nunes dredged up many of the well worn arguments. However, I never thought of this as an abortion issue at all. Rather it is about the rights of the child.

This pregnancy, and forcing the girl to carry on with it, deprives her of her fundamental right to be a child, a right guaranteed to her by UNICEF at the Convention on the rights of the child.

Motherhood, an adult responsibility, is being forced upon her first by the brutal act and apparently again by the misguided. The most merciful and just thing to do would be to shield her from any risk of further harm, physical or psychological, and restore to her the childhood she has a right to.

Equating abortion with murder has been a cruel terror tactic of the religious right. That A L Nunes and many others would unhesitatingly use this outrageously flawed argument to bully a young rape victim to the point of making her "cringe" in fear and self-disgust thinking herself as a murderer, worse than the rapist that violated her, is disgusting. That they would do this to deny her the fundamental rights that she has to be a child and that the State appears to concur is a situation that is in need of immediate redress.

Mark Abdulla

Talparo