Letters: I don’t like hunting but Alliance talk of animals being ripped apart that is what happens to infants in abortion

Answering a promise from the Countryside Alliance to fight any attempt to ban fox-hunting in Northern Ireland (‘If the Alliance Party want a fight over fox hunting then they have got one' declares pro-hunt group amid renewed push for a ban,’ December 28) the Alliance Party’s agriculture and environment spokesman, John Blair, is quoted as saying:

“Hunting wild mammals with dogs is a cruel and archaic practice which, quite frankly, should be consigned to the past”. He is also quoted as saying “in 2024, watching animals being ripped apart for sport should not be an anticipated event on anyone’s social calendar”.

Six hunts were listed across Northern Ireland on Boxing Day, hardly a massive spectator sport. When one considers that rarely is a fox ‘ripped apart for sport’, such is the failure rate, this does not rank as one of the main concerns of the Northern Ireland population. I personally do not condone the ‘sport’ of fox-hunting. I am an animal lover, even though foxes kill poultry (and do not eat them) and even new-born lambs, on occasion.

What I do take umbrage at is the fact that Mr Blair's political party, the Alliance Party supports the act of abortion where living infants are ‘ripped apart’ in the womb of the expectant mother (for such is the surgical procedure).

This, to me, is a matter for far greater concern in our society than the ‘possible’ killing of a predator in the open field.

Abortion, to me, and to the vast majority of the public, is a ‘cruel …. practice which, quite frankly, should be consigned to the past’. What depths has our society sunk to when the possible killing of a predator is of more concern than the daily killing of a helpless infant put to death in its mother’s womb.

I await a response.

Gordon McNeill, Portadown