Vasectomy row sets bishops at each other's throats

Bishops have fallen out in Ireland over a vasectomy clinic, which a Catholic wants banned and his Protestant opposite number wants to remain open.

Anti-abortion campaigners in Donegal who succeeded in closing the clinic in the town of Letterkenny, have received the backing of Philip Boyce, the Catholic Bishop of Raphoe, who last week urged members of the local health board not to approve the service if they wanted to remain true to their faith.

Bishop Boyce, a staunch Vatican loyalist who taught Dogmatic Theology in Rome for 20 years, insisted that because something was legal did not make it morally acceptable.

But his tough stance brought a stinging rebuke from his Protestant counterpart, Dr James Mehaffy, Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, who challenged the right of one church to interfere with state services. In a modern society, he said "there can be no place for the dominance of one point of view to the exclusion of others."

A handful of "pro-life" doctors who picketed the clinic after it opened last month led the health board to suspend the service. Fewer than 10 men from the waiting list had been treated.

They claimed the practice was "unChristian," even though it has long ceased to be a controversial medical procedure. Dr Leo MacAuley, a consultant obstetrician, said he was against the clinic because hospitals "were supposed to be places were life was saved, not taken away."

Even in Ireland where such disputes are not unknown, the controversy, with its "every sperm is sacred" overtones, has been greeted with disbelief.

A 1985 leaflet, Love is For Life, which set down the bishops' position, was criticised for ignoring the reality of how Catholics lived. Its opposition to artificial birth control is rejected by many practising Irish Catholics.

In practice, vasectomies are readily available privately just across the border in Northern Ireland. The move to open a clinic in Donegal followed legislation liberalising family planning by the government in Dublin. It sought to eliminate long-standing gaps in services in rural areas where Catholic influence had hitherto prevailed.