Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

letters

An Anti-Abortion Victory, but ‘at What Price’?

Readers react to a column by Ross Douthat and a guest essay by an anti-abortion advocate.

Image
Credit...Mark Peterson/Redux for The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “I Prayed and Protested to Outlaw Abortion. What Now?,” by Karen Swallow Prior (Opinion guest essay, June 25), and “Roe’s End Just the Beginning,” by Ross Douthat (column, June 26):

My message to my children has been there is always room for a baby. I consider life sacred and a blessing; the decision to have an abortion is a tragic one. But I have found the pro-life movement alienating because of the reasoning in Karen Swallow Prior and Ross Douthat’s opinion pieces: Ban abortion first and then make it unthinkable. Shouldn’t making abortion unthinkable have been the first step?

Had the pro-life movement spent as much effort supporting programs and candidates that promote child care, public education, and aiding the poor and disabled, maybe abortion would have been reduced because people would see life as a gift. But the majority of the movement stands behind regressive, hypocritical policies and candidates. The same pro-life supporters rejoicing at the end of Roe v. Wade are generally just fine with capital punishment and guns at the ready.

Many people now see bringing life into this world irresponsible given what a dystopian future seems to await a child born today.

Both of these opinion pieces strike me as disingenuous.

Maria Gardner
Santa Cruz, Calif.

To the Editor:

In April 1963 my mother died from peritonitis, the result of an illegal abortion. She was 40. I had just turned 15. My brother was 9. We were poor, barely making it from week to week, and her choices were limited and dire.

According to Karen Swallow Prior, “Roe elevated radical autonomy over moral agency.” Perhaps she should say her moral agency, the one she will impose on others or would have imposed on my mother, had she lived. But she didn’t live, because the moral agency at the time forbade her access to a safe, legal abortion.

My mother was a moral person, generous, giving and forgiving, a Roman Catholic, although not particularly religious. Dr. Prior says legalized abortion “was the consolation prize given to women in 1973 for the centuries of inequality and oppression that stemmed from their sin of not being men.” I find that remark cynical and dismissive. Legal abortions are about safety, about offering women the consolation prize of not dying, of not giving birth after rape, of not having to endure the possible result of incest.

I suppose Dr. Prior and those like her can claim victory. But I wonder at what price. I wonder, too, when a moral concept is valued more highly than an actual life, is it truly moral? And I wonder when, from this time forward, we will hear of the first unnecessary death of a young woman, and of the first sad child to lose a mother. And then the next and then the next.

Anthony Motzenbacker
Los Angeles

To the Editor:

Karen Swallow Prior begins one key sentence in her opinion piece with “If you believe, as I do, that abortion unjustly ends the life of a being that is fully human” and goes on to make a good case for her stance against abortion. But I don’t believe as she does. A microscopic blob of cells, still undifferentiated, with no brain or nervous system and looking nothing like a baby, simply doesn’t seem like a human life to me. I’m not Catholic or evangelical, so I’m not informed by the same religious teachings she subscribes to, and I deeply resent current attempts to make the rest of us live by the religious tenets of others.

I agree that the question of when life begins is a murky one that ultimately cannot be decided by objective inquiry — all the more reason to separate your church from my state and leave it up to individual conscience.

Lee Griffin
Haslett, Mich.

To the Editor:

I commend The Times for publishing a diversity of opinions, and I appreciate reading Dr. Karen Swallow Prior’s perspective on Roe and abortion. Nonetheless, her essay is fundamentally one-sided and flawed. Not in that it is pro-life, but in that she reduces abortion decisions down to either wanted or unwanted pregnancies. This myopic perspective neglects to address the health imperative that some women face when confronted with conditions for which terminating a pregnancy may be the only medical treatment that will save their lives.

As a surgeon, I have unfortunately watched women die after lacking access to timely, safe abortive obstetric care — even for pregnancies they otherwise would have wanted to keep. In health care and in life, we must make difficult decisions. Women should not have to risk death for want of a safe medical procedure so that we can proclaim we did not terminate an unborn child. In these challenging cases, the fetus will die too, and the blood of both lives will be on our communal hands.

Alexander W. Peters
Riverside, Conn.

To the Editor:

Now that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health has been decided, researchers will be able to test whether “pro-lifers” are really pro-life. Will states that ban abortion really enact more favorable laws to support infants and children from conception through childhood? Will they ensure healthy obstetric care, family leave and quality child care? Will they work to alleviate hunger and strengthen low-income families? Will they invest in public education?

I’m eager to see the data. Let’s hold the pro-lifers to their word. Maybe this will show us the true values of the pro-life movement.

Marsha Weinraub
Philadelphia
The writer is emerita professor of psychology at Temple University.

To the Editor:

When I began reading Karen Swallow Prior’s guest essay I was expecting thoughtful cogitation about ways to address the humanity of women and prevent unwanted pregnancies in a changed America. Oops.

It was the same old hand-wringing about the (unlikely) assurance of good lives for the unplanned children (not so much about the lives of the mothers) — with no discussion of family planning or contraception. She laments the high U.S. rate of abortion and blames “individualist cultural and economic ethos” instead of our cultural fear of meaningful sex education.

The absence of contraception and sex education in this piece is either an appalling oversight or, perhaps, a signal that the next “pro-life” step is to demonize family planning.

Brian Williams
Columbus, Ohio

To the Editor:

Ross Douthat suggests a future wherein conservative, anti-abortion states become “more serious about family policy and public health” in the wake of Roe’s demise. Mississippi, the state whose law was the basis for the Supreme Court reversal of Roe, has the highest rate of infant mortality among the 50 states, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. Most of the 10 worst states for infant mortality are deep red states.

The worst places for life expectancy and percentage of citizens without health insurance are similarly heavily tilted to the red states. Roe did not stop these conservative states from caring for their residents. Why would its absence reverse their neglect?

Jeffrey Goldberg
Rockville, Md.

To the Editor:

Ross Douthat characterizes the success of the anti-abortion movement as “grass-roots mobilization in defiance of elite consensus.” Just where does the Federalist Society, founded by students at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, fit in this formula?

Alan Gotthelf
New York

To the Editor:

I would like to be in the room when Ross Douthat lectures a terrified 12-year-old victim of rape on “the dignity of motherhood even when it comes unexpectedly or amid great difficulty.”

Susan Allen Toth
La Jolla, Calif.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SR, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Overturning Roe, ‘at What Price’?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT