Abortion Dilemma: ‘How, Not If’

I hear so much about how close-minded and irrational anti-abortionists are that I keep expecting reason and tolerance from the pro-choice people. They keep disappointing me. Take your recent article (Editorial Pages, April 3) by Corinne Shear Wood.

Wood arguest that since women are determined to have abortions, ther is no point in discussing the rights and wrongs of having them; the only thing to talk about is how, not whether.

This stance gives her some easy rhetorical advantages: she can play the pragmatist and dismiss the complicated questions of life before birth as mere “theoretics,” “shrill raging,” a “deceptive ‘debate.’ ” But the argument will not hold up, not in the form in which Wood give it.

Suppose we try it out on other forms of human behavior. Could we argue that there is no point in discussing the rights and wrongs of robbery, violence, rape, racism, or economic exploitation? All those things are practiced, even condoned in some forms, by a wide variety of human socities. People will probably go on committing them despite all our laws and moral teachings against them. As far as Wood’s argument goes, they are pretty much like abortion, but that does not mean that condemning them is an empty exercise in irrelevant theorizing.

If Wood thinks that abortion is different--that is, if she wants to argue that it violates nobody’s moral or civil rights--she is entitled to her opinion, but she ought to come out and explain her reasons.

The “theoretical” questions are crucial and have to be faced. Instead, Wood chooses to denounce intead of argue. I am sick and tired of hearing pro-choice people assume that they have all the answers and that anti-abortionists are a mob of ignorant fanatics. There is a frightful amount of intolerance and intellectual complacency in the complex abortion debate, all right; it is not all on one side.

PHILIP HOLT

Tustin