THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503240199
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
I just returned from visiting my daughter and her family in Cincinnati. It's hard to imagine a sweeter scene than their home, which includes our 10-month-old grandson. He is the happy result of a choice for life, made during pregnancy under less-than-ideal circumstances.
Luke has made my pro-life position even clearer to me. The pro-choice camp urges us to accept abortion on demand as part of a constitutional ``right to privacy.'' While such a right is perhaps implied, it ceases when ``privacy'' is the means to injure another person. In the case of the unborn, the most basic and clearly-stated right - the right to life - is ``privately'' taken away.
What about ``reproductive freedom?'' It seems to me that such freedom should be exercised before the coital act in the form of birth control (or self-control). Once pregnancy occurs, the couple should be faced not with a decision to ``end a pregnancy,'' but as any parents, with a decision about what is best for the baby's life.
And what about the idea that if only ``wanted'' children were born, the problems of abuse and neglect would be solved? Since 1973, child abuse has increased more than 1,000 percent. Abortion devalues children, so why are we surprised by these statistics, or even the recent murders of children by their own mothers?
Abortion also defies simple logic. While medical science strives to save the lives of very premature infants, others at the same stage of development (most often perfectly healthy and likely to go to term) are destroyed. And while fertility clinics strive so valiantly (most of the time unsuccessfully) to give childless couples the chance to realize their dreams of a family, thousands of little ones, if allowed to be born, would be available for adoption.
The abortion industry is very profitable. In 1991, Planned Parenthood affiliates received about $30 million for performing abortions. Government funding is its largest source of income, accounting for over 30 percent of its $446 million national budget in 1992.
The Planned Parenthood Action Fund announced in February 1994 that it planned to spend $10 million trying to persuade Congress to include abortion in any health care reform plan. Yet, in 1963, P.P. said: ``An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control (however) merely postpones the beginning of life.''
My daughter could have ignored these facts and selected the abortion alternative. I am so thankful that she chose life for our precious grandson instead. I'm sure Luke is, too!
Tina R. Boyer
Wilson Road
Smithfield You can have a voice in health-care reform
The story March 2 about ``The Health Care Mess'' by Dr. Robert Barr Smith helps your readers understand the most sensible reform proposal on health care. ``The American Citizens Health Care Act 1995'' is offered by the Coalition of the Public and Physicians for Sensible Health Care Reform USA. CoPPS USA is a non-profit, non-partisan and non-denominational public voice directed by voluntary board and committees.
CoPPs, USA, is going to launch its national campaign with a nationwide series of town-hall meetings. The first meeting will be in Hampton Roads in May. The purpose of these meetings is to provide and receive input from the public. CoPPs, USA urges every concerned American to join its membership. With its membership behind the final version of ``The Americans Citizens Health Care Act 1995,'' the coalition will mandate Congress to properly reform the health care system.
James E. Walsh
Chair, Board of Trustees
CoPPs, USA by CNB