Reasons to restrict abortions

Reasoning to

restrict abortions

Columnist Anne Michaud complains that GOP state legislatures are doing everything they can to prevent women from having abortions [“GOP plays long game on abortion,” Opinion, March 11].

Abortion is the law of the land. No one disputes that. What those opposed are trying to do is to place reasonable restrictions on when a woman can have an abortion.

Even the Democratic Party, in the time of President Bill Clinton, used to say that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. When was the last time we heard the Democrats say it should be rare?

As for Michaud’s claim that states are demanding too much to require that doctors at abortion clinics “have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals,” has she no recollection of Dr. Kermit Gosnell at his clinic in Philadelphia? Gosnell was convicted of murder in the deaths of three babies born alive, then stabbed with scissors. Was women’s health a priority at that clinic? What happens when something goes wrong at some of these clinics?

Abortion foes aren’t “playing the long game.” They’re working so that the large percentage of those who oppose abortion have a voice in our democracy.

Bernard Zablocki, Ridgewood

I found “GOP plays long game on abortion,” which urged Democrats to be more energetic in preventing abortion restrictions, to be caught up in the minutiae of competing strategies. Further, the statistics cited about self-induced abortions are suspect.

Here is a fact: Despite the legality of abortion, half the nation favors restrictions.

But the key objection I see is that neither this column nor Democratic candidates face the fundamental question of when life begins. The reason is obvious: An answer cannot be given to logically support abortion. While one woman might say, “It’s my body,” and claim she is carrying a meaningless mass of cells, another calls that mass “my baby.” Only one can be correct.

Contrary to what the column and Democrats say, Roe v. Wade is far from “settled law,” and the strategies on both sides will continue.

Walter Ruzek, Mineola