Anti-abortion advocates need to broaden their perspectives

Editor,

Upon reading the latest addition to the debate on abortion, I thought it might be useful to broaden the discussion to include the rest of the world's population and to address the specific issue of our health dollars that go to international programs to alleviate suffering. At the present time, no funds supplied for these programs may be diverted to assist women who come asking, even begging, for abortions. This is a direct result of the lobbying efforts of our nation's evangelical lobby and the pronouncements of the head of the Catholic Church.

I recall attending a political meeting of well-dressed women some years ago at an upscale Downtown restaurant when the subject of abortion was brought up, and I spoke on the plight of children being displaced by our military operations in the Far East, in this case, Vietnam. I described the effects of napalm when sprayed on a population that included babies and small children. I was met by silence, broken only by the question posed by one woman sitting at a table in the rear. She asked me, "Are you a member of our party?"

Today, I can imagine this same group of well-dressed women meeting at the same place and championing the same views that have been defending the life of the unborn. I would use an example of a woman from India who tried without success to obtain an abortion in order to avoid bringing a seventh child into her destitute family. She ultimately went to an agent of an international underground organization that sells fetal parts to medical schools, and she arranged to have the child cut out of her womb and sold to the agency. In this way, she hoped to feed her remaining six children for a few weeks. She bled to death on the table in that slum room.

How would this group of women have responded to these questions: "Do you care only about the life of the unborn? What about the other six? What about the 2-year-old, the 4-year-old and the others without shoes, clean water and, now, without their mother? What about the life of the unborn brought into the world near term if the mother had not gone to that back room for money? What life can it have, brought screaming from its screaming mother into a pitiless world?"

Would I have gotten the response, "Are you a member of our party?" If so, I might well have answered, "No, but are you so protective of your ideology that infant suffering, once born, means nothing to you?" Perhaps I am unfair. I should not blame them. The young woman who gave her life on that table would mean something to them if they could only see her. The problem is, they do not see her. If only the immense amount of effort and money in the anti-abortion debate could be diverted to this dead mother's cause to support her living children, then maybe these women would work for that cause. Maybe they might even give up their lunch.

Carol Lovato

UNM student