Defining ‘Pro-Life’

I read with interest the frequent commentaries and letters concerning abortion published in your newspaper.

On April 13, an Operation Rescue demonstration was held at Doctors Family Planning Clinic in Tustin. As a pro-choice volunteer who took part in the clinic defense early that morning, and other mornings, I wish to make a few observations.

The term pro-life is a misnomer when used to describe people who oppose legal abortion because it implies that they have a greater respect for life than those who support it. So-called pro-life people are, in effect, anti-choice.

Pro-choice people are certainly as pro-life as anti-choice people. The difference is that they define the life in question as that of women who will die from illegal abortion and children who will die from abuse, whereas so-called “right-to-lifers” define it as the life of a fetus.

Pro-choice people are not pro-abortion. They are for the right of the individual to make her own decision about abortion. They do not believe that decision should rest with the government or any religious organization.

At the demonstration in Tustin, anti-choice people sang religious hymns, held up rosaries and were led by a priest in cassock and a minister in clerical collar. At the same time they were pushing clinic defenders, trying to dislodge them in order to prevent patients from receiving legal medical treatment.

By their own actions, anti-choice people show us their intention--it is to impose on others their religious belief concerning abortion. That intention is the essence of this controversy.

RUTH SULTZBACH

Santa Ana