Abortion: ‘Long Line’

In your editorial (“The Long Line,” March 28) you are both right and wrong when you comment on the history of abortion in this country.

In stating that abortion has been legal for much of our nation’s 200 years you are correct. But you fail to explain one crucial detail. Abortion has always been legal to save a woman’s life. With the Supreme Court decision in 1973, abortion became legal on demand for any reason. That gives a completely different view to the situation.

I must also challenge your statement that abortion “remained a common and highly visible practice well into the 19th Century” and that the “law that did seek to regulate it did so to protect pregnant women from the dangerous abortion techniques of the time.”

This statement is untrue. During the 19th Century a huge number of scientific facts unknown to previous centuries were discovered. Perhaps the most momentous of these was the discovery of how human life begins and that a living human being is present from the moment pregnancy occurs.

In point of fact, at the 12th annual meeting of the American Medical Assn. in 1859 a resolution was unanimously adopted which condemned “the act of producing an abortion, at every stage of gestation.” No where in the resolution does it state that abortion is condemned because it is a dangerous procedure for a woman. It clearly condemned it because it is the killing of a baby.

In bestowing on women the absolute right to end the life of another human being for any reason, the Supreme Court empowered us with the authority to decide who should live and who should die for all subsequent generations.

Since 1973 the life of the unborn child rests in the desires of its mother. If she wants the baby, our society, through its laws, will protect it. If she does not, then she is allowed to kill it legally.

I would submit that that is an awesome power to which we women hold no proper claim. During the nine months of pregnancy the rights of another must be considered.

If abortion becomes so acceptable, so commonplace, that no one lifts a voice against it, then all human life will have lost much of its significance.

LICIA NICASSIO

Coordinator, Respect Life

Archdiocese of Los Angeles