LETTER Easy to write laws that apply to others
It’s very easy to write laws that only apply to other people. That’s the inescapable injustice of handling the issue of abortion through the legal/political system. Men cannot really conceive, as it were, of having an unwanted pregnancy. Men still write the laws. Women who are in a position to write laws can understand the issue better, but, whether they are “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” they have the money and connections to have a choice, whether they want to use it or not. People with money can always go to their own doctors or to another state or country where they can have a safe abortion.
As a marriage counselor for 40 years, I can tell you that normal, good people with strong, moral beliefs – when it’s their family, their daughter, their granddaughter, their grandson’s “unworthy” girlfriend or even themselves – sometimes will choose abortion. The ability to make that choice, right or wrong, cannot be taken from them. It comes down to whether they have the money.
All the political and legal grandstanding going on is simply about whether people with money will decide to take the choice of a safe abortion away from those “other people” without money.
Gerard Weiss
Washington