Readers React: Is a California doctor who travels to Texas to perform abortions a hero or a zealot?

To the editor: The article on the unnamed physician who travels regularly to Texas to provide much-needed abortions is a powerful show of compassion.

The topic of abortion is often characterized by the strident arguments of supporters and opponents, and less often we see the perspective from a point where judgment is suspended. This article explores the topic from a vastly different viewpoint, and in so doing it displays the courage of a doctor who does something that she believes is important.

Even though there are people in this world who do not condone her work and who would do her harm, this doctor persists. Her compassion for other women is astounding, no matter if abortion is right or wrong.

Crystal Parker, Long Beach

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To the editor: I found the story on the California doctor who traveled to Texas to perform abortions deeply disturbing.

It wouldn’t have hit so hard to me if a friend hadn’t lost her younger son four years ago, and her older son cannot have children. After going through the excruciating pain of a son dying from a rare disease, now she hears her older son and his wife are too old to adopt. What to do?

How about a baby from Texas?

It seems that dozens of people a day abort a fetus at this particular abortion clinic, and the Los Angeles Times is there to report it. How easy is it to solve this intractable problem of some people who are too fertile and others who can’t produce one baby?

Bonnie Selway, Manhattan Beach

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To the editor: The unnamed physician removes “clumps of cells” from women in procedures “as safe as colonoscopies.”

Words matter. Legally buying and selling “chattel” until the abolition of slavery meant that a certain kind of person did not belong to the human family. “Yellowish-red tissue smaller than her little finger” has the same function.

Abortion pushes persons in construction out of the human family. That something is legal does not mean it’s moral. The choice of words in the article obfuscates the facts described.

Maria Elena de las Carreras, Northridge

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To the editor: This article vividly displays the heroism of doctors who travel extensively to provide abortions in under-served areas.

It also gives the public a much-needed perspective on the incremental and insidious chipping away at women’s reproductive rights. The sticker on the door of the Dallas clinic says it all: “Every day good women have abortions.”

And thank you for bringing Column One back. It’s a great start.

Alison Mayersohn, Los Angeles

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