Freedom of choice

Correspondent Bea Green says to prolifers “You don’t know the circumstances, you have no right to judge” (29/7). Green doesn’t use the “my body, my choice” argument (where justification is not needed) but refers instead to the “personal circumstances” of the pregnant women.

But, the point of pro-life is that a human being (even in its very early days) is so valuable that there are hardly any “personal circumstances” that can outweigh it. Unless the pregnant woman’s life is threatened by the pregnancy or by labour, her circumstances are not relevant to the abortion issue. However, those circumstances are still important. There are all kinds of dire straits she may be in — she may need support in carrying the child to term — and pro-life used to ignore this. Now, they say both mother and child should live and flourish. We should not allow the debate to force us to choose between them. Gavan O’Farrell, Lower Hutt Bea Green is “disgusted” with the Voice for Life organisation for publicly displaying 13,285 baby booties representing the number of babies killed by abortion in New Zealand. She says “You don’t know what these women are going through or what their personal circumstances are”. Having counselled pregnant women, I believe that many who seek abortions are in social and economic difficulties, thus correcting social and economic injustice is a very important aspect of the abortion problem. Instead of killing the unborn, innocent and defenceless, let’s work toward killing the unfair social and economic conditions and replace them with just ones. Barbara Linton, Te Awamutu.