Letters: Abortion, in China and here

Re “China’s one-child policy enforced unevenly, cruelly,” June 16

In China, as in the United States, the term “family planning” has become a euphemism for taking innocent human lives.

A six-month pregnant woman in China has her baby ripped from her body against her will by local officials, and almost everyone agrees this is an outrage. Why isn’t it an outrage if a five-month pregnant woman goes to a Planned Parenthood clinic and asks for an abortion because she doesn’t want the baby?

Are abortion rights advocates truly saying that the value of human life depends solely on the subjective wishes of the woman carrying it? That if you want the life it is a baby and to kill it is a crime, but if you do not want the life it is a fetus and your choice to abort it is to be protected?

Leah Gould

Glendale

The article about forced abortions in China is horrifying. This is an example of what happens when the state takes charge of a woman’s body. In one country, it is prohibiting abortions; in another, it is forcing abortions.

Officialdom needs to be out of this altogether — neither for nor against. It is up to the women, their families and their doctors to make these decisions.

Patricia L. Moore

Los Angeles

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