Clinton on Abortion Bill
* It comes as no surprise but President Clinton did not tell the truth when he stated that the “health” exception he urged to the vetoed bill banning partial-birth abortion was “a minor amendment” (May 24). The Supreme Court has defined “health” to include even emotional upset so that there would be no case where a “health” claim could not be made.
Clinton knows this and also knows that the medical evidence at the congressional hearings established that the hypothetical situation he described in his speech does not exist. There is no situation in which partial-birth abortion is necessary to permit future childbearing.
RICHARD M. COLEMAN
Los Angeles
* You continuously use the term “partial-birth abortion,” a label invented by anti-choice fanatics to create the impression that a pregnancy is being terminated as the fetus is moving down the birth canal.
A normal birth occurs between 36 and 38 weeks of gestation. A late-term abortion--a term you used only once--is induced shortly after the 20th week, barely half-way through a normal pregnancy. How easily even The Times can be brainwashed.
F.G. WOOD
Bakersfield
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