Podhoretz on Abortion Issue

Podhoretz has a distorted view of the abortion issue. You cannot blame the legalization of abortion for the moral dilemmas we now face. Advances in medical science are always accompanied by moral crises.

Making abortions illegal will not solve the fetal tissue dilemma. Making abortions illegal will not even stop abortions, it will only make women, especially poor women, desperate enough to take terrible risks with their health and their very lives. In the “good old days” before abortion was legalized, thousands of young women mutilated themselves or bled to death or died of infection, but abortion never stopped because it was against the law. Is this what Podhoretz wants us to return to?

No woman finds it easy to choose abortion. It is a terrible choice, but all too often the other “choices” available are much worse.

Would Podhoretz ban medical research which might save lives because it might also force us to make more of the difficult decisions about how to cope legally with medical choices which didn’t exist yesterday?

You can’t stuff the genie back in the bottle. Progress always creates new problems as it solves old ones.

N.B. CLOUD

Los Angeles