Reader wants empathy for fetuses, not moms

Editor,

And so yet another letter from a “pro-choice” person, Kendall Lovely, which completely ignores the people who have no choice in the abortion debate – the 5-month-old fetuses who have brains, hearts and the ability to hear their mothers’ voices and heartbeats.

Throughout her long-winded appeal to emotion, Lovely harps on the value of “empathy.” However, this is a value which she extends only to the pregnant woman and not to the 5-month-old unborn baby. As stated in an earlier letter, these unborn babies can feel pain and will scream when their developing skulls are cut open with scissors and have their brains suctioned out.

To use Lovely’s words, this is indeed a “traumatic nightmare” for the 5-month-old fetuses. What are the specifics that would justify calling giving birth a traumatic nightmare? Lovely gives none in her argumentum ad ignorantiam which ignores the unborn.

Lovely speaks of the “women who might not be able to carry through a pregnancy for personal reasons …” A more accurate statement would be women who do not want to carry through a pregnancy for personal reasons. Lovely gives no evidence that any of her reasons – “physical, emotional, and/or financial” actually prevent a woman from carrying through a pregnancy. Killing unborn babies because they will be born into poverty is no different from going up to a poor person and saying “I’m going to kill you because you’re materially impoverished” and then doing it.

Furthermore, Lovely begs the question when saying that a ban on late term abortions would “oppress the entire female sex.” What about pregnant women who are opposed to abortion? What about women who are infertile? However, Lovely is correct in that killing 5-month-old unborn female babies is oppressive.

In addition, Lovely brings up the red herring of harm done to women who choose to have abortions through “underground channels.” Does Lovely really think that, for the unborn baby, being killed by specialized scissors is any less painful than a coat hanger?

I would like this rhetoric stopped. The central question is not how much suffering the pregnant woman is going through, but whether the unborn baby is a person with the same rights to be protected from murder as any person who has already been born.

Since the unborn embryo/fetus/baby was created by humans, has all the information in his/her DNA needed for an entire life span and is growing, i.e. alive, he/she is a person.

I want empathy, at least some for 5-month-old unborn babies. I would also like it if Lovely had the empathy to inform women of the possible, and documented, health problems that abortion can cause, such as later problems with fertility.

Mark J. Wilson
UNM alumnus