Editor,
While reading the Nov. 17 Daily Lobo, my peer and I came across the letter, “Abortion kills, ends destinies of people who could change world” written by Steve Chavez. This letter had numerable inconsistencies that we feel obligated to address. Mr. Chavez’s argument against a woman’s right to abortion is based primarily on potentiality. This is fallacious.
First and foremost, the assumption that destiny is a universal force which determines our actions is naïve at best. Second,
he presupposes that destiny is solely a positive function. If destiny exists, it seems short-sighted to posit that it only beneficially affects people’s lives. Third, the fact that he is using destiny as an argument completely negates itself. From Mr. Chavez’s perspective, if destiny is defined as a universal force that pushes the outcome of a given situation, would it not therefore be the destiny of said fetus to be aborted? Assuming that his argument of destiny is viable, then we must confront the unsettling prospect of the atrocities of reality. Mr. Chavez fails to realize that his argument insinuates that it was destiny that six million Jews died in the Holocaust, or that it was destined for Africans to be enslaved for 400 years or that the victims of 9/11 could do nothing to escape their destiny, their fate. The repercussions of these contingencies within Mr. Chavez’s argument make it a morbid and purely preposterous view. If destiny causes people to perform acts of great humanitarianism, then it must also determine the actions of maliciously destructive and violent people, the latter category encompassing a larger percentage of the population. Therefore, Mr. Chavez’s austere anti-abortion stance positioned on the merits of fate is just as valid as a mandatory abortion policy to prevent socially perverse individuals from enacting their supposed destiny. We would ask that, in the future, people refrain from presenting narrowly constructed proposals that benefit their personal positions without considering the full scope of consequences that arise from their assertions.
Adam Clark
Daily Lobo reader
