Safe Abortion is NOT an oxymoron

In response to both Richard Carey and Jenny Maroney's anti choice letters with respect to abortion in the Metro West Daily News of 5/11 and 5/12 respectively I disagree with both views posted below.

Jenny, up is not down and down is not up as you characterize our culture. It is not that easy. Your down may be my up and vice versa. Culture does not work especially in a free nation in an "up or down" way. Things change because sometimes change is called for.

Richard Carey's anti choice position that "safe abortion" is an oxymoron because killing a human life can never be safe.

My view is “An attack on legal and safe abortions” is NOT an oxymoron because it means the word "safe" relates to the full term MOTHER carrying a fetus. That means if it is legal it will be performed not by a quack in a back ally abortion of yesteryear where women suffered blood poisoning, ruined uterae and even death. Safe abortion means that the mother could have another child when she could care for it properly or when she was not impregnated by a rape, or when she was not incestuously impregnated by her father, uncle or brother.

You will have to accept the fact that I do not accept your definition of a fetus as a viable full-term human being. It isn't to me. It's a fetus. Killing a baby OUTSIDE of the uterus at 9 months would be killing a full term human being.

Moreover, different cultures and religions think of the fetus as a child in different ways. Some would preserve the life of the mother first before the life of the fetus if both were in trouble. Some cultures do not consider a child viable unless it lived for two weeks or more after its birth. This was true for my own mother who gave birth to a severely deformed child who lived less than two weeks after its birth. The child was given no name, there was no funeral, and there was no shiva (a week of mourning) because for Jews of that era that was Jewish law. My mother's psychological welfare after the traumatic death of her child was deemed preeminent.

The moral of the story is you define when life begins your way but let others who define it differently from you have access to safe, legal termination of a pregnancy as the 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade said she could.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/letters?refresh=true