Both sides of the abortion issue
Life and death
Regarding “Hundreds march through downtown Houston to protest potential repeal of abortion protections,” (May 3): As an 84-year-old retired journalist, I think I have pretty much seen and heard it all on the abortion controversy. If everyone would just take a deep breath and step back for a moment and look at the reality of the issue. There are laws against killing people. The Chronicle has stories daily of innocent people being killed. So, my question is: “What makes abortion any different?” When an innocent fetus is killed, that living fetus would have developed into a person in less than nine months. There are some exceptions where the life and death of the mother may be involved. But using abortion for an unwanted pregnancy, as birth control, in this day and age is unconscionable because birth control is basically available to any woman not wanting to get pregnant. And men who impregnate women are just as responsible and should be held accountable financially or criminally. There are choices such as adoption or taking responsibility for raising the child, but abortion shouldn’t be one of them.
I watched young women on TV exhorting their support for abortion in front of the Supreme Court building after the leak concerning the Roe v. Wade discussion among the justices. Many were wearing T-shirts brandishing “I had an abortion” like a badge of honor. I wonder what their response would be if asked: “What if your mother had aborted you as an unwanted pregnancy?” Would they feel the same then? Murder is murder, whether before or after birth.
Dick Brown, Conroe
Regarding “Retired Houston OBGYN shares harrowing stories of abortions before Roe v. Wade decision,” (May 3): I recently retired from the University of Texas Medical Branch after 59 years on the staff and faculty. As a hematologist in the 1960s, I watched a young desperate woman bleed to death following her attempt to terminate an unwanted pregnancy using a knitting needle. Like Dr. Harold Miller, I too fear that this type of needless loss of life will return if women are denied safe abortions. It was not a pretty sight seeing this woman die from bleeding that physicians could not stop.
Jack B. Alperin, Galveston
Regarding “Apple, Amazon among Texas companies that promise to help employees get abortions despite trigger law,” (May 3): Chris Tomlinson asks corporations to stand up for women’s right to make health care choices. Erica Grieder talks about the clawback of women’s rights. The editorial board declares that Americans should get angry because women no longer will be able to make decisions about their bodies. Abortion is not health care; it is the dismembering of an innocent child. Health care is healing, not killing. Abortion is an act of violence that discriminates against a tiny human being. The actual procedure is never openly discussed. Why not? Too disturbing perhaps? Abortion can only be justified by dehumanizing the baby being aborted. They lack a voice to speak up in their own defense and may be the most marginalized demographic of all. A fetus is alive, human and growing. The right to life is inalienable and universal. Working to create a world where abortion is not necessary because every woman and unborn child has access to support and assistance should be the goal. Ending an innocent human life is not the answer.
Michael Spiech, Sugar Land
Abortion and the death penalty go hand in hand. If you are against abortion, you should also be against the death penalty. Period. If you’re for the death penalty and not abortion, you are a hypocrite and a misogynist.
C.L. McNulty, Houston
Government involvement
Regarding “Texas poised to outlaw nearly all abortions if Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade,” (May 2): Although I knew that Roe v. Wade was likely to be overturned by this Supreme Court, I didn’t know how it would feel when that prospect became real. Now I can tell you, it feels bad, very bad. There’s nothing like being told, in a very concrete way, that your life is not important. That the government is entitled to rule your life and your choices in a very personal and direct way.
If women cannot control their reproductive lives, they are by definition second-class citizens. Their lack of that control will affect every part of their lives. High-paying, high-responsibility jobs will no longer be as available to women; what employer wants an employee who cannot be relied upon? Why invest in a woman’s education when she will likely be sidelined having babies?
I am trying to summon the logical reasons why this is such a stupid thing to do. There are lots of logical reasons. But every time I think of one, I just want to dissolve in a feral howl of grief and rage. Don’t babies deserve to be wanted? Don’t they deserve to be born into a situation where they can thrive? Who is served by forcing us into pregnancy and childbirth? What is the point?
Don’t tell me that it’s because you are “pro-life.” That is a sick joke, the way that this is made to sound like it’s a good thing. But we all know that if it was really about “life,” about the lives of innocent babies, that we would, as a society, be concerned about caring for those babies once they are born. And it is quite clear that we are not. As we are not concerned about providing contraception, which would greatly reduce the need for any abortions. Because it is not about “life,” it is about controlling women’s lives. What I need to know now is, what do I do with my rage?
Jacqueline Clark, Houston
The government's involvement now in a woman’s most private decision should be of great concern to every freedomloving American. Where has been the voice of the medical professionals in the SCOTUS decision? There’s a January New York Times article, “In medicine, a lack of courage has helped put Roe in jeopardy,” that sheds a sad light on the absence of that source of advice.
Sara Jean Jackson, Houston
Church and state
Regarding “Once conflicted, Biden embraces role as abortion defender,” (May 5): If Joe Biden is a true Catholic with strong religious convictions as he claims, why is he not thrilled over the reversal of Roe v. Wade? He is an irredeemable phony Catholic who should never receive Holy Communion. He plays the religious card when it’s to his advantage.
I am at a loss to understand how some Catholics can embrace Catholic theology on Sunday morning and then cast votes in support of Democratic ideals totally foreign to Catholicism on Monday morning.
We need to decide what is more important in our lives: our religion or our politics. The Democratic Party cannot give us both.
Mike Gonzales, Houston
Regarding “After almost 50 years opposing Roe v. Wade, longtime antiabortion advocate ‘hopeful’,” (May 3): Like virtually every other political hot button issue — whether it is guns, pandemics or abortion — our conflicts are about how science vs. fundamentalist religion sees the world. But scientists never claimed to create the universe, they just find out how it was created. It is then up to mankind to figure out moral positions. The problem with believing that the soul is present at conception is that you then must believe in an incredibly brutal God, one who kills off a number of those souls before they have a chance at life. Really? Maybe it is the science that is correct, that what makes us human is in the higher functions of the brain — which we all seem to agree on at the end of life, but for some reason not at the beginning. Even God would be a criminal in this country under Republican leadership.
Deborah Moran, Houston
The enthusiasm of some Americans in wanting to overturn Roe is often an expression of religious fervor and beliefs. We should remember that some religions, including the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Church and Reform as well as conservative Judaism are generally in favor of a woman’s right to choose. These religions mandate doing everything possible to save the life of the mother. Houston Rabbi Joshua Fixler focused on this topic recently in the Chronicle. It would seem that at some point the courts will have to decide whether the state has the right to force a woman to carry a fetus to term if it conflicts with the beliefs and laws of her religion.
Alan J. Hurwitz, Houston
Health care
Regarding “Editorial: If Supreme Court scraps Roe, there’s only 1 way to protect Texas abortion rights.,” (May 3): I wholeheartedly agree with this editorial. One of the most salient points: “the cruelty of outlawing abortion is hard to overstate.” Texas has stubbornly refused to expand Medicare and Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act which would allow health coverage for many of Texas' low-income earners. Women have made large strides in the United States since acquiring the right to vote a little over a hundred years ago. As the editorial concludes, if Texans are unhappy about the likelihood that Roe v. Wade (incidentally, a Texas case) will be overruled, then the best way to have a meaningful impact and effect change in Texas is to vote in 2022.
Alexus Sham, Conroe
Conservatives, particularly those on the far right, should be honest and acknowledge that many of the policies they’ve pursued over the past 40 years have increased the likelihood that a women experiencing a crisis pregnancy will choose to abort.
For starters, it’s harder to cover family costs because, in the name of capitalism and economic efficiency, they’ve allowed many good-paying American jobs to be outsourced to countries where wages are abysmally low. Most of the jobs in this country now seem to be of the low-pay, service industry variety, leaving many people to struggle along paycheck to paycheck. Raising children requires resources.
It’s also harder to provide health care for the family because unions have been busted and American businesses have been allowed to engage in a race to the bottom when it comes to providing employee benefits. And when a government program is devised to help with that — the Affordable Care Act — it gets not one Republican vote in support of the final bill, and they then vote over 50 times to repeal it. Raising a child with no access to quality health care is scary.
On education, Republicans have fought against universal pre-K, have cut the taxes that support K-12 education and have deregulated tuition at public universities so that a college education has become unaffordable, or saddles families with decades of debt.
Women experiencing an unwanted pregnancy should keep in mind that these lawmakers, who care so much about bringing that baby to term, care very little about what comes after. At that point, you’re on your own in the very hard world they did a lot to create.
David Bradley, Spring
Regarding “Abortion access is already nearly impossible in Texas. It’s about to get a lot harder.,” (May 4): Let’s see now. The claim by abortion advocates is that abortion is a woman’s health issue. This piece reports that nearly 1,500 Texas women on average are crossing into seven neighboring states to get abortions each month. Texas must be a very unhealthy state for women given those numbers. However, the magnitude of these numbers indicates the health issue leading to abortion is not physical, but spiritual and moral.
J. Jones, La Porte
Regarding “Apple, Amazon among Texas companies that promise to help employees get abortions despite trigger law,” (May 3): Chris Tomlinson overlooked one of the most obvious reasons that big companies such as Amazon are paying employees up to $4,000 in travel expenses for non-life threatening medical treatments that include abortion — that is, for profit.
According to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data, the median cost for childbirth in 2014 was $16,884. Amazon employs approximately 1 million people.
According to data from the CDC, in 2019 there were 195 abortions per 1,000 live births. If this ratio of abortions were to hold true for Amazon employees of child birthing age, the cost savings to Amazon would be in the millions of dollars, not to mention the ongoing savings of well-baby/pediatric care after the birth of a child and no parental leave costs.
Amazon and other large corporations get double benefits for paying for abortions: virtue signaling to abortion proponents plus adding to the bottom line. Terry Rountree, Katy