Let’s help care for all ‘unwanted’ children

Iwould like to weigh in on the story about the pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription for a woman because he mistakenly assumed she was responsible for her unborn child’s death, though she wasn’t, and he refused to be party to a killing (“Pharmacists need to do their jobs,” Our View, June 27).

I’m not sure why this story hit the national news feed. I have noticed for the past 50 years that stories that cast abortion in a bad light do not see the light of day in the “legitimate” press.

No pharmacist, doctor, nurse or anyone should ever be required to be a party to killing. I wonder if a person can become an OB-GYN these days if he or she refuses to kill. Saying abortion is health care does not make it so. Children are not a disease. Reproduction is a normal function of all living beings. People can opt out of the norm, and there are many ways to do so today. Before killing an “unwanted” child, maybe we should consider all the people, including gay couples, who would love to be parents but cannot bear their own children.

Some women (and those who act as though they speak for all women probably don’t speak for even half ) say that abortion is absolutely necessary for their survival. If I told you, “My marriage was falling apart and I just couldn’t possibly manage to survive on one income, lose my house and half my belongings, share custody of my children with their father, and deal with lawyers and all of the myriad problems and expenses that divorce entails. I was desperate, so I decided to terminate my marriage.” That sounds pretty catastrophic and you would ponder that for about 10 seconds. Then you would say, “But you shot your husband to death!”

One of the U.S. Supreme Court’s justifications for making abortion legal was that we don’t know when life begins. I believe that was wrong in 1973. It is even more absurd today after 1,000,000 babies have been born via in vitro fertilization, and imaging inside the uterus reveals a truth hardly imaginable. Justification for abortion and the numbers of those willing to participate are becoming fewer and fewer. Maybe we ought to turn our attention to helping those with unplanned children with practical help and a plan for the future for both child and parents.

No pharmacist, doctor, nurse or anyone should ever be required to be a party to killing.