EDITOR: Kathryn Delman paints a broad brush when she states
“People that have abortions don’t know that they aren’t just
having a controversial procedure, but they are killing a baby” in
the recent letter to the editor.
EDITOR:
Kathryn Delman paints a broad brush when she states “People that have abortions don’t know that they aren’t just having a controversial procedure, but they are killing a baby” in the recent letter to the editor.
Delman’s statement concludes that women must just need a little “education” because you know women, they’re a little slow in understanding their bodies. She’ll enlighten them and let them know their fetuses are human, abortion is bad and poof – nor more abortion. Sorry. This isn’t reality.
Reality is the pregnant mother of four who can’t feed the children she already has. It is the pregnant 15-year-old who won’t finish high school if she has a baby. It is the pregnant professional woman who doesn’t want children and the condom failed. A vicious sexual assault with a resulting pregnancy might be another woman’s reality.
Sadly, reality can also be the hoped for and cherished fetus that has multiple birth defects and no chance of survival outside the womb. Yes, some of these examples might be women who don’t, as Delman said “want the inconvenience of a baby,” but it is their body and their choice.
The humanity of the fetus isn’t in question. Women aren’t stupid. She might not be financially, emotionally, psychologically or physically ready to have a child, but no woman goes to her doctor and says, “take this non-human growth out of me.” Well, maybe some women do. Of course, that would be from the paternal side of the gene pool.
Perhaps instead of discussing the abortion issue and the humanity of the fetus we should be debating some other issues that effect women: Why Viagra is covered by most prescription plans and birth control pills are not, or why the FDA is holding up over the counter sales of the ‘morning after pill’ although it’s been deemed safe by physicians, or why rape victims aren’t offered emergency contraception in some hospital emergency rooms, or why some pharmacists won’t fill emergency contraception prescriptions because it will not allow a fertilized ovum to implant in the uterus and they feel that is causing an abortion.
Women’s reproductive choices must be kept safe, legal and confidential. The decision to abort a pregnancy or carry it to term should be between a woman and her doctor. As the bumper sticker says, “If you are against abortion, don’t have one.”
Perrin Larton,
Morgan Hill
