LETTER: Variety of people are anti-abortion
To the editor:
Liz Emery’s article on abortion certainly tries to be provocative, as an editorial column should be. However, it is also trying to be a rallying cry, and it does both on the basis of very poor, emotional arguments.
She implies that only “rich men” are opposed to abortion, which is simply untrue. Women and men both put themselves on either side of the issue, and some pro-life groups, such as Live Action (the group that performed video stings against Planned Parenthood recently) are run by women.
These women are not Stepford Wives robots; they believe abortion is the willful killing of an innocent person and is wrong no matter what. Appealing to gender for authority misses this fact and also misses the point. If my gender stops me from talking about a “woman’s body” then there should never be male doctors for women. Also, by that rule, women shouldn’t tell men what moral issues they can discuss. Gender doesn’t disqualify me from discussing moral issues any more than scientific ones.
The moral issue is what is important here, anyway. She claims the Catholic Church opposes abortion out of patriarchy and repression, but the church claims that abortion is the willful murder of an innocent person, and what right is there to that? The idea that abortion is at least the willful destruction of a human being isn’t a religious claim, its a scientific one. The fetus will not grow up to be an oak tree or a seahorse. Liz, as have others, may claim it is still not a person, and therefore not given moral standing, but she doesn’t make such a claim, and it’s a dangerous road to walk.
The claim that conservatives oppose the planning of families is also nonsense, since there are other means to do so beyond artificial birth control and abortion, and the issues run deeper than gender roles.
I applaud Liz for trying to be provocative as she should be in a student paper. Trying to hold rallies on bad information and demonizing statements, however, is dangerous and part of the current problem in our country as we are seeing with the Wall Street protests.
Will Holloway