GOP Decision on Abortion

Re “GOP Drops Litmus Test on Late-Term Abortion,” Jan. 17:

Forty years ago this month--January 1958--my wife was rushed to the hospital. She was in the ninth month of what had been a difficult pregnancy and ready to give birth, when she began to bleed profusely. The doctors informed me that the baby was almost certainly going to die; the only way they could save the baby required an emergency procedure that would kill my wife, and they were required under Massachusetts law to ask me to decide whether they should do that or not. I am not dreaming this up. I was asked if it was OK to kill my wife and the mother of my three children, ages 6, 3 and 2 at the time, in order to save an unborn child. I declined; my wife was saved.

The current pro-life crowd is no different than the people who pushed through the kill-the-mother legislation back in those dark days. I was gratified that the Republican Party voted to keep its options open regarding funding of pro-choice Republican candidates.

ROBERT W. LOVELL

Huntington Beach

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Congratulations for clarifying the perplexing partial result of the GOP-killer debate on the proposal that would withhold financial and technical party support to any Republican candidate who failed to oppose late-term abortion legislation. This suicidal fight should solidify the obvious truth that there is no way to mix party politics with a woman’s decision whether or not to end an unwanted pregnancy.

CLARA LINK

Pasadena

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Patt Morrison’s attack on the pro-life movement (Jan. 16) was disturbing. Those of us who believe in the rights of the unborn child take exception to her cavalier attitude. All of the women Morrison refers to who “wanted to love and care for their children properly, with a father, in a home,” etc. chose to take a life when they aborted their child. Unfortunately, those babies had no voice and they joined the millions of other unborn babies who were murdered by those who try to justify taking away life because they refuse to acknowledge that a fetus “in utero” is actually a human being.

Who are we, as mere mortals, to decide over life or death? In the end, it will be God who judges, and God who delivers the fate of those who continue to abort life that is ultimately given and taken by God.

MARGARET COFFMAN

Upland