Abortion Debate and the New Pill

Cal Thomas, in his column (Editorial Pages, Jan. 4), “The Abortion Debate Faces a Premature Death,” asserts that the new anti-pregnancy drug, RU-486, developed in France, should be rejected, firstly, by the Food and Drug Administration because of its potentially hazardous side effects, and secondly, because there has never been a national debate on abortion. There doesn’t seem to be much connection between the two.

His rigidly constrained point of view does not prompt him to inquire whether RU-486 is more or less risky for women than carrying pregnancies to term.

Neither does he explain why a national debate is needed on the private decisions of women faced with unwanted pregnancies. They do not force attention on him. He seeks it out, and they number, by his estimate, in the tens of millions.

I wonder by what right men, as a class, can presume to tell women, as a class, to what extent they can control their fertility. Why does he involve himself with others’ decisions in such matters? No one is trying to affect his.

Thomas expresses concerns for the zygotes and embryos that are not permitted to grow, and misuses the terms “baby” and “developing child” where there is not yet a baby or a developing child. He does this to play on natural but primitive instincts to propagate and preserve the species. In this way he tries to bolster his otherwise vacuous arguments.

Birth control is a difficult enough problem without burdening it with the mindless hysterically cast connotations Thomas would attach to it.

R.P. LATHROP

Newhall