LTTE in The Day: Include Abortion In Talk About Death Penalty

[Larkspur]

http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=5E317C83-0636-4305-810D-968D3C4C1081>http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx...0D-968D3C4C1081

Your opposition to the death penalty in Connecticut is laudable, saying Connecticut has wisely avoided capital punishment for decades even after statutes made it possible (“Connecticut's wrong decision,” May 1).

However, Connecticut did not wisely avoid capital punishment for innocent, unborn children even after statutes made abortion possible. You write, “What are lawmakers thinking when they justify state-sanctioned killing as a response to Mr. Ross's violence?” What then do you say about state-sanctioned killing in response to pregnancy? In your editorial, you add, “Rather, in adopting capital punishment and intending to put it into practice, Connecticut has diminished itself. It has detracted from our own collective morality.”

Connecticut, and our entire nation was forever diminished when it put capital punishment for the unborn into practice in 1973, resulting in the mass murder of more than 46 million victims.

The Day's editorial states, “We all know what decent people think about any killer.” What should decent people think about abortionists, as well as those who are complicit in their despicable crimes? Don't try to spin and sugarcoat evil, thinking it will become acceptable if euphemisms like choice, privacy, reproductive rights and quality of life are used to obscure the stark horror of a national atrocity.

A decent and fair-minded conclusion would be: Killing is never justified, most especially when it makes victims of the most vulnerable, helpless and innocent members of our society.

I sent a response to The Day about this LTTE. I'll post my response in the next Reply.

[Larkspur]

1. My response to The Day about this LTTE.

“… our entire nation was forever diminished when it put capital punishment for the unborn into practice in 1973…,” said John Goodrich <”Include Abortion In Talk About Death Penalty,” May 9, 2005>.

Reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Machelle Seibel told Gregg Easterbrook <“Abortion and Brain Waves: What Neither Side Wants You do Know,” The New Republic, Jan. 31, 2000>, "The majority of cases in which there is a fertilized egg result in the non-realization of a person."

Science discovered that only about 30% of all fertilized eggs become babies. If God or Nature terminates two thirds of the “unborn”, how can any rational person confidently claim life exists inside a woman’s womb at conception?

By the beginning of the third trimester, the cerebral cortex and the thalamus, the part of the brain that translates thoughts into nervous-system commands, have connected. At this point, scientists detect brain waves in fetuses similar to that of newborns. Could these brain waves signal when life, in the constitutional sense, begins? Isn’t it logical that the newborn’s brain is fully “wired” when life outside the mother becomes possible?

Contrary to what anti-abortionists say, Roe vs Wade legally sanctioned women to do consciously what God or Nature already do randomly, but it didn’t give carte blanche to women seeking abortion. Roe allowed women to obtain an abortion without restriction in the first trimester. In the second trimester, women needed the help of qualified practitioners to obtain abortions, and in the third trimester, it allowed states to prohibit abortion, except when necessary "to preserve the life or health of the mother." Subsequent rulings to Roe blurred Roe’s moral meaning.

As a moral society which cares about the health of all its citizens, we need to return to the original version of Roe vs Wade, not overturn it.


Note to editors: I’m the secretary of the Killingly Democratic Town Committee and a board member of Connecticut National Organization for Women.

I did have a letter-to-the-editor published on April 29, 2005 in The Day, so I don't know if they will use my LTTE or if they'll wait to publish it in a couple weeks.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. good reply

I get sooooo tired of people calling zygotes "babies" and "human beings" when they are not viable outside the womb. And let's not forget that some rw whackos that want to make women report all possible miscarriages, as if having a miscarriage isn't trauma enough....

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Wonder what would happen if we declared 'sperm are people too'

and made certain private acts committed by men illegal?