My mother told me that she had two illegal abortions in the 1950s, before I was born. She also told me that she probably wouldn’t have given birth to my sister or myself if she had kept those two earlier pregnancies. Those two aborted births were replaced by two later births.

We see anti-choice activists bawling crocodile tears over aborted fetuses, but who among them cries for the wanted child who would later have existed, but won’t, because an abortion was forcibly prevented?

If we deny women the chance to give birth on a timetable that fits their readiness, then the children we impose upon them can force them down less opportune roads in life, and frequently perpetuates cycles of poverty.

Life does NOT begin at conception. Life has been continuous since humanity began. All sperm and eggs are alive and contain genetic codes unique to mankind. Conception is simply a mechanical combing of these.

It is BIRTH that counts in this discussion, and not anything that comes beforehand. Trying to save embryos or fetuses makes no more sense than trying to save the quintillion or more sperm and eggs that happen to exist at any given moment, worldwide.

Before Roe Vs. Wade abortions were performed in numbers comparable to today’s, so the real issue is do we want them performed safely or under dangerous, clandestine conditions?

Charles Godwin

Davenport, Iowa