Dial back the rhetoric

The author of the July 6 letter “The real terrorists” provides a gruesome portrayal of the abortion practice in an attempt to reverse the claim of the author of a June 29 letter (“Debate, not terrorism”) that categorized as terrorism rare cases in which pro-life extremists bomb “legally operated clinics,” assassinate doctors, and maim or kill clinic workers.

While both the July 6 author and I would agree that we need to find something else that everyone can count on so that abortions are essentially obsolete, I am afraid that abortions as practiced in these “legally operated clinics” do not actually qualify as terrorism.

Gruesome as such surgeries are, they are not performed with the intent of inciting terror within a population. If they were, the operating rooms would probably have walls made of bulletproof glass so pedestrians can watch as they walk by. Bombings, on the other hand, are pretty popular among terrorists.

Second, I seriously doubt the June 29 writer is a “pro-death advocate,” as the July 6 writer claims. If an affordable, safe, 100 percent reliable solution that does not involve killing anything finally presents itself, a sane mind would not even consider abortion, and the practice would likely be extinct anyway.

I am not fond of abortion either, but it is not terrorism.