Letters to the Editor

What wasn’t said at the rally

In an event intended to stir echoes of the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, pro-abortion activists assembled in Washington this weekend (“Pro-choice rally on Mall,” Monday, Metropolitan). We expected andheardimpassioned speeches denouncing restrictions on abortion as a direct threat to women’s lives, a violation of their constitutional rights and an assault on freedom itself.

President Bush was vilified for having signed into law both the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. What we did not hear this weekend, however, was a discussion of our collective responsibility to America’s smallest and mostvulnerablechildren, namely, our pre-term infants.

None of the marchers acknowledged that in some hospitals, such as the University of Iowa hospitals and clinics, almost 80 percent of 24-week pre-term infants survive and do well. No one will mention that in some of the same hospitals where pre-term babies receive state-of-the-art medical care, other 22- to 24-week unborn infants are discarded as medical waste. No one will acknowledge that the partial-birth abortion law simply bans one technical procedure but fails to ban the actual abortion.

Did anyone marching this weekend care about the following health-care paradox? Black Americans have decreased access to medical care with one major exception: Black women have increased access to suction and sharp curettage, the two surgical procedures that account for 97 percent of the abortions performed in this country. Why are black women electively aborting unborn babies at almost three times the rate of white women?

DR. HANES SWINGLE

Pediatric fellow

University of Iowa

Iowa City

…

Adrienne T. Washington, in her Friday column on the abortion rally on Sunday, “Long-ago abortion still fuels woman’s anger” (Metropolitan), relates the story of a woman who had an illegal abortion 50 years ago and is still bitter about it. She quotes the woman as saying the abortion was “the most degrading, horrible experience of my life” and further, “you feel so violated.” “Abortion should be rare; it’s not something you walk into gladly,” the woman also says.

Well, not much has changed even though abortion is legal. A recent poll by the Elliot Institute found that just 16 percent of women believe abortion makes their lives better, and among those women who are pro-choice, fewer than 30 percent believe it can improve their lives. In addition, 67 percent of pro-choice women would be more likely to vote for a candidate who calls for government support for grief-counseling programs to assist women who have had abortions.

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