Readers React: GOP’s moderate women prevent an abortion disaster

To the editor: What sweet irony. The GOP, in an attempt to alter the perception that it’s waging a war on women, has symbolically included more women in its ranks. Who knew that these new House members would traitorously revolt and demonstrate respect for women by blocking an abortion bill that would have subjected raped women to particular conditions to qualify for a legal abortion? (“House abortion bill switch reveals emerging clout of moderate Republicans,” Jan. 22)

What next? Will these rogue femmes demand a higher minimum wage, equal pay for women, sane gun laws and climate action to protect the planet their children will inherit?

As House Speaker John A. Boehner frantically attempts to appease ultra-conservatives, is it any wonder he has a headache?

Wendy Blais, North Hills

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To the editor: Facts, or the lack of them, have never bothered ideologues.

It is a biological fact that an apple seed is not an apple, even though, under favorable conditions, it will develop into a tree that will produce apples. We express this fact by saying that an apple seed is only a potential apple tree and beyond that a potential apple.

Similar logic suggests that the human fetus at conception is not a miniature human being, much less a person. Under favorable conditions it will, of course, become such, but it is no more an actual person than an apple seed is an actual apple.

The significant point about potentiality, as philosopher Joel Feinberg noted, is that when it comes to rights, a potential “X” doesn’t necessarily have the same rights as an actual “X.” In our system of government, the president-elect is the potential commander in chief, but that doesn’t mean he has the same rights as the current commander in chief.

Come to think of it, some day all of us living persons will be corpses, but that doesn’t mean that we are, right now, what we will become.

Shane Andre, Seal Beach

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