Recently CNN News ran two consecutive stories which inadvertently, yet graphically, illustrated the thinking behind the pro-life movements.

The first covered Operation Rescue demonstrators blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic. While they sat at the entrance, police escorted women into the clinic where they could legally abort their babies.

The second story covered the unexplainable death of three of five quintuplets born prematurely. For some unnamed period of time, the hospital neonatal unit has expended great human and financial resources to save these five babies.

Please consider the glaring logical inconsistency between these stories:

*Both cases involve pre-term babies. One is terminated legally, the others are saved with no limit on cost or effort.

*Both cases constitute live, healthy babies. Pre-term births occur regularly and the children grow to maturity.

*It is not a privacy issue. If it were, why doesn’t the mother in the second story have the same right to kill one of her quintuplets—privately.

There are many, many who believe that abortion is not murder. I wonder if those of that viewpoint realize that in some abortions, even after the abortion procedure, the baby is born alive? At this point, the doctor waits for the baby to die and then is required to issue a birth certificate and a death certificate.

If we continue to legitimize abortions of healthy babies yet unborn, that would suggest it should be legal for parents to kill babies at one, two, even three years of age? Please show me the qualitative difference if you can?

Responsible adults have several alternatives to avoid unwanted pregnancies, but if pregnancy occurs, then bearing the consequences of our actions is the only moral and responsible action.

Those who support the pro-abortion or pro-choice position state that abortion is a private matter in which government should have no role.

If pre-term babies are born to live full lives, then can you avoid theological implication that the much higher law than privacy, should be enforced on the question of abortion?

Del Lawson

NIU alumnus