Mr. Murphy’s impassioned letter in Friday’s opinion section is certainly a fervent piece of rhetoric. He hits all the talking points, throwing out the number of abortions performed each day as well providing details as to how the fetus in the woman’s womb is really just a small person.

Yet Mr. Murphy ignores several very important points in his tirade. First and foremost, he completely disregards a woman’s right to choose, saying “this makes no sense.” I’m presuming that Mr. Murphy has always been a Mr., not a Ms. or Mrs. and, therefore, has no actual experience being pregnant, nor really any right to tell another how to use their body.

The debate around when life begins is a philosophical one, not political. To attempt to make the debate political is a mistake, to imply that this is a cut and dried issue of ignoring the Fourteenth Amendment is a dangerous oversimplification. When does the cluster of cells in a woman’s womb become its own separate entity? Mr. Murphy challenges that at 24 weeks a fetus has brain waves; I challenge back: Brain waves signifying what?

Regardless of what Mr. Murphy personally believes, there is no consensus on when life begins. What constitutes a living thing? Mr. Murphy’s editorial ignores this issue, apparently choosing to believe that life begins at least at the twenty-fourth week. I recognize his right to his own opinions, but he does not have the right to suggest his opinion is the correct one.

Mr. Murphy should be aware there is by no means consensus in the religious community on the matter of abortions, as well. St. Thomas Aquinas held that fetuses are not born with souls but that they are “quickened” later in the pregnancy. Dr. Ayala, a prominent biologist, has also pointed out that 20 percent of all pregnancies end in natural “spontaneous abortions” making nature and or God the greatest practitioner of these “atrocious acts of murder.”

Mr. Murphy is attempting, as many pro-life advocates do, to turn this incredibly complex philosophical debate in a black and white political issue. To throw around numbers of fetuses killed and characteristics of a 6-month-old fetus is to cloud the issue and distract from the real question. A debate on abortion must look at the philosophical and religious underpinnings of our personal lives and that promises to be a thorny enough issue without throwing out such phrases as “horrible slaughtering of human beings.”

I challenge Mr. Murphy to raise the level of his discourse above this shock tactic inflammatory rhetoric and engage in an actual philosophical discussion. This is no easy task. Intelligently debating and discussing an issue with someone of a different mindset is challenging, and the urge to retreat behind a wall of mindless statistics and facts is tempting.

Quincy Miller

Alumnus