Ignorance and ideological rhetoric are abound
Dear Editor,
I would like to respond to Ms. Moten’s letter concerning abortion (“Homosexuality, abortion are misread” in the March 24 edition of The Colonnade) and in a limited sense the emotionally charged idiocy and complete lack of awareness that I often across on the editorial page. I find myself surprised every week at how naive, or simply wrong, many of the claims or allegations made by the students are.
In the case of Ms. Moten’s letter I have to say her declaration that “there are few women who use abortion as a form of birth control” is more than doubtful considering that 57 percent of the abortions carried out in the United States are for social reasons. These reasons are varied and include everything from problems in the woman’s current relationship, to not being ready for the responsibility, to a child representing too much of a change in the woman’s life. Conversely, 32 percent were undergone because the woman was too young or she lacked the means to financially support the child. Only six percent are performed for health-related reasons (there are potential health problems for the mother or child) while a mere one percent occur as a result of rape or incest. This is quite interesting, particularly if you note that 48 percent of the abortions that occur in the States are performed on women who’ve had at least one previously. These numbers bring us back to the central question: whether or not women use abortion as a form of birth control?
Well, honestly, statistics can’t answer it. It’s mostly a matter of which statistics you refer to. For me I’ve mostly fallen somewhere in the middle when it comes to a woman’s “right” to choose. You might ask why that would be my position given what I’ve said so far and I would tell you it’s because it is one of the most complex questions we face in America today and often a matter of scientific technicality. Quite often it may very well be used as a form of emergency or last-minute birth control but is it morally reprehensible? No more so than keeping someone’s body “alive” long after their brain is dead or their organs cease functioning.
Whatever your position may be I would urge you to rationally and critically consider this issue, or any issue for that matter, and maybe do some research before spouting some emotionally laden charges against or for something. The same goes for the ongoing and often ridiculous rants regarding the “extreme social agenda” of the “far left” or the “hypocrisy” of the President or the “bigotry” of this or that group, to use the words of Mr. McMullen, Mr. Shreve, and Ms. Keith respectively. If you want to “prove” your perception as valid then don’t simply just squawk about how the other side is wrong because you say so. All it will amount to is some entertaining reading and maybe a few laughs about how absurd you sound. Oh, and just to let you know Mr. McMullen, Hitler was a fascist not a communist; two fundamentally different ideologies.
*all statistics courtesy of the Guttmacher Institute
(http://www.guttmacher.org/index.html)
Sincerely,
Ben Lambert
Senior
Political Science Major
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Apr 7 2006. Filed under Opinion.
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