Abortion Debate: Choosing Sides

Re “Abortion: Should the Courts Just Shut Up?” Opinion, Jan. 16: The issue of abortion will never be settled unless the argument is framed correctly.

A third point of view that escapes discussion must also be considered.

To deny a woman the right to an abortion is not the opposite of allowing her the choice of having an abortion. To deny her an abortion is the 180-degree extreme of not allowing her to carry a pregnancy to term.

Mandatory abortion may not be a popular view, but without it one gets the idea that “freedom of choice” is the extreme position.

After the election it was sad to see members of the Democratic leadership say that the party must be more tolerant in accepting the anti-abortion platform. There is no tolerance in the anti-abortion platform.

Pro-choice is the middle way -- what could be more tolerant than letting women decide this personal matter guided by their consciences and creeds?

Pat Davis

Woodland Hills

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I think Douglas W. Kmiec fails to understand the reality of many women’s lives when he states that abortion is not a necessary condition for equal treatment.

Single mothers have the highest rate of poverty in this country across demographic groups, and many partnered women still assume most of the responsibility for the day-to-day care of children and as a result find their own opportunities to be more limited than those of their partner.

Additionally, when he states that concerns such as these and other ethical dilemmas are better raised before conception, he seemingly fails to take into account the numbers of women who are raped and sexually assaulted every year, the people who do not have access to birth control or contraceptives, those who do not even have access to accurate information about contraception, and the responsible people whose birth control method fails them.

I wholeheartedly agree with Kmiec that people have a responsibility to plan to prevent pregnancy before engaging in sex, but in an imperfect world abortion needs to be available as an option.

Sheila Peck

Huntington Beach

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Sylvia A. Law’s entire argument is based upon the premise that there is no life before delivery, even after acknowledging that there is no scientific or religious consensus on when life begins. Until that basic issue is resolved, neither will be the issues in Roe vs. Wade.

Indeed, she seems to delight in ignoring the possibility that abortion, even a day before delivery, involves a life other than the mother’s.

How else could she say that Roe reflects a commitment to individual liberty (what about the baby’s?), that abortion affirms the human life of adults (what about the baby’s?), that abortion is a moral issue that should be resolved in relation to the woman’s health (and no relation to the woman’s baby?), that denial of abortion would constitute gender discrimination (but apparently not discrimination against the baby’s interests), and that pro-choice people affirm the value and complexity of human life (unless it’s an unborn baby).

As a matter of law, how does one square her position with the recent conviction of Scott Peterson for killing his unborn child?

Law’s arguments about the difficulty of being pregnant or deciding that it’s inconvenient or too expensive to have a baby can only be countenanced if there is universal agreement that before the moment of delivery a fetus is nothing but an undifferentiated blob of protoplasm.

Richard Morse

Redondo Beach

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Abortion rights can be protected from conservative judges by a constitutional amendment that puts the essence of Roe vs. Wade into plain language in the Constitution -- a right to privacy in the first trimester of pregnancy and a right to life in the third.

Could it pass? Ask the question in an L.A. Times poll and let’s find out.

Susan Shelley

Sherman Oaks