Opinion | An Anti-Abortion Victory, but ‘at What Price’?

To the Editor:

Re “I Prayed and Protested to Outlaw Abortion. What Now?,” by Karen Swallow Prior (Opinion visitor essay, June 25), and “Roe’s Finish Simply the Starting,” by Ross Douthat (column, June 26):

My message to my youngsters has been there may be all the time room for a child. I think about life sacred and a blessing; the choice to have an abortion is a tragic one. However I’ve discovered the pro-life motion alienating due to the reasoning in Karen Swallow Prior and Ross Douthat’s opinion items: Ban abortion first after which make it unthinkable. Shouldn’t making abortion unthinkable have been step one?

Had the pro-life motion spent as a lot effort supporting packages and candidates that promote baby care, public training, and aiding the poor and disabled, possibly abortion would have been decreased as a result of folks would see life as a present. However the majority of the motion stands behind regressive, hypocritical insurance policies and candidates. The identical pro-life supporters rejoicing on the finish of Roe v. Wade are typically simply superb with capital punishment and weapons on the prepared.

Many individuals now see bringing life into this world irresponsible given what a dystopian future appears to await a baby born immediately.

Each of those opinion items strike me as disingenuous.

Maria Gardner
Santa Cruz, Calif.

To the Editor:

In April 1963 my mom died from peritonitis, the results of an unlawful abortion. She was 40. I had simply turned 15. My brother was 9. We have been poor, barely making it from week to week, and her selections have been restricted and dire.

In line with Karen Swallow Prior, “Roe elevated radical autonomy over ethical company.” Maybe she ought to say her ethical company, the one she’s going to impose on others or would have imposed on my mom, had she lived. However she didn’t dwell, as a result of the ethical company on the time forbade her entry to a secure, authorized abortion.

My mom was an ethical individual, beneficiant, giving and forgiving, a Roman Catholic, though not notably non secular. Dr. Prior says legalized abortion “was the comfort prize given to ladies in 1973 for the centuries of inequality and oppression that stemmed from their sin of not being males.” I discover that comment cynical and dismissive. Authorized abortions are about security, about providing ladies the comfort prize of not dying, of not giving delivery after rape, of not having to endure the potential results of incest.

I suppose Dr. Prior and people like her can declare victory. However I’m wondering at what worth. I’m wondering, too, when an ethical idea is valued extra extremely than an precise life, is it actually ethical? And I’m wondering when, from this time ahead, we’ll hear of the primary pointless demise of a younger lady, and of the primary unhappy baby to lose a mom. After which the following after which the following.

Anthony Motzenbacker
Los Angeles

To the Editor:

Karen Swallow Prior begins one key sentence in her opinion piece with “Should you consider, as I do, that abortion unjustly ends the lifetime of a being that’s totally human” and goes on to make a very good case for her stance in opposition to abortion. However I don’t consider as she does. A microscopic blob of cells, nonetheless undifferentiated, with no mind or nervous system and looking out nothing like a child, merely doesn’t look like a human life to me. I’m not Catholic or evangelical, so I’m not knowledgeable by the identical non secular teachings she subscribes to, and I deeply resent present makes an attempt to make the remainder of us dwell by the non secular tenets of others.

I agree that the query of when life begins is a murky one which finally can’t be determined by goal inquiry — all of the extra motive to separate your church from my state and depart it as much as particular person conscience.

Lee Griffin
Haslett, Mich.

To the Editor:

I commend The Occasions for publishing a range of opinions, and I admire studying Dr. Karen Swallow Prior’s perspective on Roe and abortion. Nonetheless, her essay is basically one-sided and flawed. Not in that it’s pro-life, however in that she reduces abortion selections all the way down to both wished or undesirable pregnancies. This myopic perspective neglects to deal with the well being crucial that some ladies face when confronted with situations for which terminating a being pregnant often is the solely medical therapy that may save their lives.

As a surgeon, I’ve sadly watched ladies die after missing entry to well timed, secure abortive obstetric care — even for pregnancies they in any other case would have wished to maintain. In well being care and in life, we should make tough selections. Ladies shouldn’t must danger demise for need of a secure medical process in order that we are able to proclaim we didn’t terminate an unborn baby. In these difficult circumstances, the fetus will die too, and the blood of each lives shall be on our communal palms.

Alexander W. Peters
Riverside, Conn.

To the Editor:

Now that Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being has been determined, researchers will have the ability to take a look at whether or not “pro-lifers” are actually pro-life. Will states that ban abortion actually enact extra favorable legal guidelines to help infants and kids from conception by way of childhood? Will they guarantee wholesome obstetric care, household depart and high quality baby care? Will they work to alleviate starvation and strengthen low-income households? Will they spend money on public training?

I’m desirous to see the information. Let’s maintain the pro-lifers to their phrase. Possibly this can present us the true values of the pro-life motion.

Marsha Weinraub
Philadelphia
The author is emerita professor of psychology at Temple College.

To the Editor:

Once I started studying Karen Swallow Prior’s visitor essay I used to be anticipating considerate cogitation about methods to deal with the humanity of ladies and stop undesirable pregnancies in a modified America. Oops.

It was the identical outdated hand-wringing in regards to the (unlikely) assurance of fine lives for the unplanned youngsters (not a lot in regards to the lives of the moms) — with no dialogue of household planning or contraception. She laments the excessive U.S. fee of abortion and blames “individualist cultural and financial ethos” as an alternative of our cultural concern of significant intercourse training.

The absence of contraception and intercourse training on this piece is both an appalling oversight or, maybe, a sign that the following “pro-life” step is to demonize household planning.

Brian Williams
Columbus, Ohio

To the Editor:

Ross Douthat suggests a future whereby conservative, anti-abortion states turn out to be “extra severe about household coverage and public well being” within the wake of Roe’s demise. Mississippi, the state whose regulation was the premise for the Supreme Courtroom reversal of Roe, has the very best fee of toddler mortality among the many 50 states, per Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention statistics. A lot of the 10 worst states for toddler mortality are deep pink states.

The worst locations for all times expectancy and share of residents with out medical health insurance are equally closely tilted to the pink states. Roe didn’t cease these conservative states from caring for his or her residents. Why would its absence reverse their neglect?

Jeffrey Goldberg
Rockville, Md.

To the Editor:

Ross Douthat characterizes the success of the anti-abortion motion as “grass-roots mobilization in defiance of elite consensus.” Simply the place does the Federalist Society, based by college students at Yale Regulation Faculty, Harvard Regulation Faculty and the College of Chicago Regulation Faculty, match on this method?

Alan Gotthelf
New York

To the Editor:

I wish to be within the room when Ross Douthat lectures a terrified 12-year-old sufferer of rape on “the dignity of motherhood even when it comes unexpectedly or amid nice issue.”

Susan Allen Toth
La Jolla, Calif.