IN her letter about abortion, Linda Henderson (HAS, June 13) accuses me of saying things I never said.

Nowhere have I objected to the surgical removal of a baby dead in the womb from its mother. That's not abortion.

Abortion is the killing of a living unborn baby. Is it ever justifiable to do that, just because it's convenient to do so, so that the mother's social and professional life doesn't suffer?

Beneath the emotive language, Linda Henderson's letter seems to be saying, in effect, that it is - and that's not a view that anyone who's thought seriously and rationally about the subject could possibly condone. In all essentials, spiritual and biological, an unborn baby is a complete human being. The photographic evidence is there to prove it.

Abortion, therefore, can never be justified. It is murder, of a peculiarly heinous kind, and as such will bring judgement upon those who perpetrate it and those who connive at it - if not in this life, then in the next.

Tony Kelly, Crook, Co Durham.