Why Wasn’t Honesty Carpenter-McMillan’s Policy?

Your cover story about Susan Carpenter-McMillan (“The Sound Bite Queen,” by Carla Hall, Dec. 14) brings up an important issue: honesty with the public.

For about 16 years, I was, on a volunteer basis, the main public speaker and debater for the California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. For 10 or so of those years, Carpenter-McMillan was my primary and most frequent debating opponent. Until she revealed in an April 1990 Times article that she herself had undergone an abortion, she hadn’t admitted it in any of her public presentations on the issue. That was the case throughout the majority of her time as chief spokesperson for the Right to Life League of Southern California.

A woman of integrity would have admitted to having had an abortion from the moment she started speaking on behalf of the anti-abortion movement. She could have said she realized, after the fact, that her choice was wrong. Concealing it for all those years while she was a leading anti-abortion activist was devious and hypocritical.

Edward Tabash

Beverly Hills

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Carpenter-McMillan is probably typical of many people who are unable to deal with their transgressions and subsequently become passionate crusaders for whatever cause they feel will help to assuage their own gnawing sense of guilt. How fortunate that she was able to have an abortion and continue with her schooling until she was ready to marry and live a rather affluent life. Now if she’d let other women have the choice she had, I might have a modicum of respect for her anger.

Victor Gentile

Beverly Hills

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Carpenter-McMillan is a wealthy woman who is concerned about getting her carefully made-up persona into the media eye. To call her a “conservative feminist” is a joke; she has no real grasp of any feminist issues.

Judithanne Young

Norco

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I consider myself a feminist, but Carpenter-McMillan does not speak for me--or for most of the thinking women I know. She gives the impression of being a bored housewife with a need to see and hear herself on television.

A. Horn

Studio City