Letters to the Editor

Pro-choice politicians and Pastors want to be popular rather than honorable so they excuse abortion. Some politicians say they are "personally opposed to abortion." But they also say, "I cannot impose my belief on others." What they aren't acknowledging is that every time they vote on a law they are "imposing their beliefs on others." By claiming to be "abortion neutral" the government avoids its responsibility to protect the weak.

Responding to how some pro-choice pastors say, "As a pastor, my job is to nurture souls, not control bodies. And besides, an aborted child would just go to heaven anyway." Pastors who know abortion is murder do not speak out for fear of offending someone. The church has traded its moral authority for comfort and popularity. We need to send out a new message that the church will not remain silent.

Back

Letter Number: 93 The media has irresponsibly polluted a story of the death of a girl who had an abortion with lies about how abortion is supposed to be safer than childbirth. Abortion certainly wasn't safe for this mother. What's really disgusting is that the only time you ever hear anybody say childbirth is dangerous is when they want to encourage abortions. Books on pregnancy and childbirth all tout how safe childbirth is. Healthy women rarely develop problems, and even the high-risk patient can be brought safely through pregnancy. Books on abortion, on the other hand, paint pregnancy and childbirth as a mine field through which a woman is lucky to negotiate alive. What we really have is a bunch of abortion advocates behaving as vultures hovering over the bodies of the few women who die in childbirth. For them, maternal mortality is a bonanza--each childbirth death can be used to sell abortions. It's disgusting that these people get rich off the deaths of women.
Letter Number: 94 The media has polluted a story of the death of a young girl who had an abortion with lies that abortion is safer than childbirth. Abortion certainly wasn't safe for this mother. Even though it's silly, I'll assume that the numbers from the CDC are right--that first-trimester abortions are as safe as the CDC claims. This girl who died didn't have a first-trimester abortion. She was 18 weeks pregnant--well into the second trimester. Even pro-abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood admit that by 16 weeks, abortion is at least as risky as childbirth. Every two weeks thereafter, the risk doubles. That means this girl was facing twice the risk of death she would have faced if she had continued the pregnancy. She played the odds and lost. But the truth is, abortion advocates aren't really concerned with women's safety. If they were, they would all call for a ban on abortions after 16 weeks, since by then even foaming-at-the-mouth pro-aborts admit that birth is safer. But they were willing to sit back and let this young girl die--as long as her baby would die, too. It seems strange that abortion advocates find babies so repugnant that they are willing to sacrifice healthy 14-year-old girls to kill them. Pro-choice people often try to claim that pro-lifers have some sort of macabre fetus fetish. Ironically, it is they who appear to have this problem. They are so obsessed with killing them that they forget the fact that they are also playing with women's lives. Or perhaps they just don't care.
Letter Number: 95 It has been said by a local pro-abortion leader that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth. She then went off on a statistical tirade that supposedly proves her point. However, she failed to mention that all these statistics come from abortionists. That's as credible as taking smoking death statistics from a tobacco company. The truth is, we have no valid information at all on how dangerous abortion is. What we need to look at is the sheer absurdity of the suggestion that the unborn routinely pose some kind of threat to their mothers. It is now possible for physicians to identify those extraordinarily rare instances where birth might cause harm, and to take measures to protect the health of mother and child long before the birth occurs. When you combine that medical reality with the fact that not one piece of federal pro-life legislation proposed since 1973 would have prevented abortions necessary to save the life of the mother, this whole issue quickly gets exposed as a phony one. If you want to see just how phony it is, ask abortion proponents if they would be willing to ban abortions after that point in pregnancy at which the risk to the mother is greater than for childbirth. They'll come up with some lame excuse for saying no. Which, of course, should make you wonder what their real agenda is.
Letter Number: 96 A local pro-abortion leader has argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth. To see just how phony this concern is, go out and ask a thousand mothers how much time they spent while they were pregnant worrying that they would die during birth. Or ask a thousand legitimate physicians--in other words, those who don't do abortions--how often they've had a woman die giving birth. Now, if we are going to buy into this idea that abortion is justified because it's safer than childbirth, then it only makes sense that we start requiring women to end all their pregnancies through abortion. After all, that would undeniably save the most women's lives possible. Lest you scoff at me, I will point out that at least one abortion advocate has suggested that women be required to sign consent forms for carrying to term! If abortionists were really concerned with maternal risk, they would long ago have banned abortions after 16 weeks, the point at which even rabid pro-aborts agree that the risk to the mother is equal to--or greater than--the risk of childbirth. Clearly, this "risks of childbirth" thing is brought up not out of concern for women's well-being, but as just another excuse for making money by selling abortions.
Letter Number: 97 Pro-abortion activists have said that abortion is justified because it is safer than childbirth. First, the statistics they use for this argument come from abortionists. Second, abortion is certainly not safer for the baby. I think if we could ask babies, they would rather take their chances in a delivery room than an abortion clinic. As for the mother, if we carry this pathetic line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, then we also need to start allowing people to kill their born children as well as their unborn children. After all, children don't just pose a risk to their mothers before birth, they also pose one afterward. Sometimes they cause the death of a parent through an accident. Crime statistics also show that a certain number of children will grow up to one day abuse--or even murder--their parents. So we could save the lives of those mothers who might one day be killed by one of their own children, by allowing them to kill those children first. Obviously these arguments are asinine. For people to say that killing children can be justified because they might pose a small statistical risk to one of their parents shows exactly how morally bankrupt the whole idea of legalized abortion is. It's just one more sorry example of an abortion-industry smoke screen designed to keep its apologists from having to defend the act of abortion.
Letter Number: 98 A local pro-abortion leader has argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth. She then went off on a statistical tirade that supposedly proves her point. She failed to mention that all these statistics come from abortionists. That's as credible as taking smoking death statistics from a tobacco company. But let's for a moment assume that childbirth can be as risky as abortion advocates claim it is. Those rare pregnancy complications that do threaten the mother's life are far more common in women who have a history of abortion. In case you haven't noticed, the ectopic pregnancy rate in this country has skyrocketed in almost direct proportion to the abortion rate. Both the direct physical damage abortion can do to a woman's reproductive organs and the infection that is common following abortion contribute to this problem. Abortion weakens the cervix, making miscarriage and its attendant risks more common. The top of the uterus, where the baby usually implants, is often damaged during abortion. This means that the baby more often implants close to the cervix, causing placenta previa, another complication that can kill this wanted baby, and also threaten the mother's life. Tears and strains on the uterine muscles can lead to a woman's uterus rupturing during labor with a later pregnancy. What a horrible way for both mother and baby to die! To subject women to all this unnecessary danger, and then claim to be interested in preventing maternal deaths, is the ultimate hypocrisy.
Letter Number: 99 A local abortion clinic director has argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth. She then went off on a statistical tirade that supposedly proves her point. She failed to mention that all these statistics come from abortionists. That's as credible as taking smoking death statistics from a tobacco company. What she's trying to do is give people the image of pregnancy and childbirth as some horrible, life-threatening experience, and abortion as innocuous and even lifesaving. The truth is that those few rare problems that would make pregnancy risky are more common in women who have damaged their reproductive systems through abortion. The argument of abortion advocates is that we should use abortions to spare women the risks caused by abortions to begin with! It's stupid. I wonder--if, after reviewing the valid scientific studies, this abortion clinic director was convinced it was more dangerous than childbirth, would she be willing to outlaw abortion? Of course not. It isn't women's lives they're concerned about, it's abortionists' lifestyles.
Letter Number: 100 A pro-abortion activist recently argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth. She then went off on a statistical tirade that supposedly proves her point. She failed to mention that all these statistics come from abortionists. That's as credible as taking smoking death statistics from a tobacco company. Now, we'll ignore the fact that her statistics are bogus. Instead, we'll assume that the child does somehow pose a risk to the mother--that seven out of every 100,000 fetuses indeed cause their mothers to die in childbirth. Does it make sense to kill 33,000 out of every 100,000? That's how many we actually kill--one-third of all children conceived. Shouldn't we just kill the seven dangerous fetuses? Pardon the expression, but it seems like overkill to wipe out 33,000 babies for every seven that are causing a risk to their mothers. That's killing nearly 5,000 times more children than are any danger to anybody. Is it really necessary to kill the other 32,993? The truth is, this "dangers of childbirth" line is just a public relations ploy to make abortion seem like some lifesaving surgery instead of what it is: gratuitous killing.
Letter Number: 101 A pro-abortion activist recently argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth. She then went off on a statistical tirade that supposedly proves her point. She failed to mention that all these statistics come from abortionists. That's as credible as taking smoking death statistics from a tobacco company. However, for the sake of argument, I'll assume at least some of her statistics aren't bogus. I'll agree that seven out of every 100,000 fetuses cause their mothers to die in childbirth. That's about one out of every 14,000. Should we use this as the cut-off point for killing people who pose a risk to others? If one out of every 14,000 alcoholics is involved in a fatal traffic accident, would that justify executing all alcoholics? If one out of every 14,000 people with AIDS gave the deadly disease to someone else, would that justify legalizing the killing of the HIV-positive? By this pro-abortion fanatic's math, it would. And what if the risk of childbirth fell further? What if, for example, only three of every 100,000 fetuses caused a maternal death? Would we stop killing fetuses, or would we have to kill less-lethal born persons as well? This all goes to show how phony the "risks of childbirth" line is. If abortion advocates were really concerned about the risks of childbirth, they would have been satisfied with those abortions necessary to save the life of the mother. And those were never illegal to begin with.
Letter Number: 102 A pro-abortion fanatic recently claimed that abortion is necessary to keep women from dying in childbirth. What century is this woman living in? Even Planned Parenthood's medical director, Mary Calderone, said--in 1960--that, "Medically speaking...it is hardly ever necessary today to consider the life of a mother as threatened by a pregnancy." The reality is, the only time anybody ever claims that pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous is when they are trying to justify abortions.
Letter Number: 103 Last week, a 14-year-old girl died from a botched abortion at the local abortion mill. Incredibly, the news coverage focused not on the danger of abortion, but the dangers of childbirth! For this letter, I will ignore the fact that even pro-abortion groups admit that abortions like the one this young girl had--those after 16 weeks--are more dangerous than childbirth. We will look only at the earlier abortions, which are supposed to be so much safer than birth. If early abortion is so much safer than birth, shouldn't we require that all pregnancies be aborted? Some abortion supporters have advocated doing just that. Warren Hern, the most respected abortionist in America, calls pregnancy a disease, and cites a colleague who thinks women should have to sign release forms before allowing a pregnancy to continue to term! If we want to use this pathetic line of reasoning, we should also kill born children. After all, some children will eventually kill their parents. I would bet that many parents are killed in auto accidents driving their kids to school or to the orthodontist. If children are a health risk to their mothers, shouldn't we kill them all? But of course, this whole idea doesn't hold water. No sane mother would kill her child, even to spare her own life. What mother would kill her child just to put already safe odds even further in her own favor?
Letter Number: 104 News coverage of the recent abortion malpractice case left much to be desired. It was good that the media described the details of the woman's injuries, but they misled the public when they said abortion complications are very rare. It is nearly impossible to say how often abortion complications occur. The National Center for Health Statistics stopped asking abortion facilities to report complications because they were so grotesquely underreported that the data was meaningless. Abortionists often don't even bother to document complications on the clinic records. An undercover investigator at one abortion mill reported employees checking off "no complications" on patient charts even though an alarming number of patients informed the clinic of serious complications. In fact, patients who have died during abortions have been noted on their charts as alert and able to walk, without complications. When we have this kind of reporting, it is grossly irresponsible to claim to know how often women suffer abortion complications. The truth is, we don't know. And if you look at the kind of suffering the woman suing for malpractice went through, you have to wonder if it's worth the risk at all.
Letter Number: 105 I was pleased that the news media covered the recent abortion malpractice case. But they misled the public when they said abortion complications are very rare. Abortion advocates report estimated complication rates in percentages. These numbers look small, so it seems safe to dismiss the risks as minimal. But if you convert the percentages into odds of suffering the complication, it looks much different. For example, incomplete abortions have been reported as happening in 0.61 percent to 4.5 percent of early abortions. That may sound low, until you realize that this means they don't know if your chance of having an incomplete abortion is one in 164 or one in 22. Does it make a difference if hemorrhage happens in 0.05 percent of early abortions, or 4.9 percent? Both sound low. But there's a big difference between odds of one in 2,000 and odds of one in 20. One other point. Statistics don't matter to the women and their families. When it happens to you, it's 100 percent. And when even something as innocuous sounding as an incomplete abortion can kill you, do you really want to take any risk at all?
Letter Number: 106 An outspoken abortion proponent defends abortion on the grounds that childbirth is ever so much more dangerous. If she is so worried about maternal mortality, why isn't she crusading against birth control pills? According to Williams Obstetrics, oral contraceptives killed 452 women in 1975 and 327 women in 1982. Even if the death rate is slowly falling, that still means that we are killing hundreds of women every year, just to make them sexually available to men 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That bears repeating: just so men won't ever have to be told "no," hundreds of women die from oral contraceptives every year. Is it surprising that people willing to kill so many women with the Pill express no sorrow over women who die from legal abortions? What are the real motives of the Pill-pushers and abortionists? It can't be women's well-being, or they wouldn't be accomplices in so many women's deaths. Could it be simple greed?

Letter Number: 93

The media has irresponsibly polluted a story of the death of a girl who had an abortion with lies about how abortion is supposed to be safer than childbirth. Abortion certainly wasn't safe for this mother.

What's really disgusting is that the only time you ever hear anybody say childbirth is dangerous is when they want to encourage abortions. Books on pregnancy and childbirth all tout how safe childbirth is. Healthy women rarely develop problems, and even the high-risk patient can be brought safely through pregnancy. Books on abortion, on the other hand, paint pregnancy and childbirth as a mine field through which a woman is lucky to negotiate alive.

What we really have is a bunch of abortion advocates behaving as vultures hovering over the bodies of the few women who die in childbirth. For them, maternal mortality is a bonanza--each childbirth death can be used to sell abortions. It's disgusting that these people get rich off the deaths of women.

Letter Number: 94

The media has polluted a story of the death of a young girl who had an abortion with lies that abortion is safer than childbirth. Abortion certainly wasn't safe for this mother.

Even though it's silly, I'll assume that the numbers from the CDC are right--that first-trimester abortions are as safe as the CDC claims. This girl who died didn't have a first-trimester abortion. She was 18 weeks pregnant--well into the second trimester.

Even pro-abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood admit that by 16 weeks, abortion is at least as risky as childbirth. Every two weeks thereafter, the risk doubles. That means this girl was facing twice the risk of death she would have faced if she had continued the pregnancy. She played the odds and lost.

But the truth is, abortion advocates aren't really concerned with women's safety. If they were, they would all call for a ban on abortions after 16 weeks, since by then even foaming-at-the-mouth pro-aborts admit that birth is safer. But they were willing to sit back and let this young girl die--as long as her baby would die, too. It seems strange that abortion advocates find babies so repugnant that they are willing to sacrifice healthy 14-year-old girls to kill them.

Pro-choice people often try to claim that pro-lifers have some sort of macabre fetus fetish. Ironically, it is they who appear to have this problem. They are so obsessed with killing them that they forget the fact that they are also playing with women's lives. Or perhaps they just don't care.

Letter Number: 95

It has been said by a local pro-abortion leader that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth.

She then went off on a statistical tirade that supposedly proves her point. However, she failed to mention that all these statistics come from abortionists. That's as credible as taking smoking death statistics from a tobacco company. The truth is, we have no valid information at all on how dangerous abortion is.

What we need to look at is the sheer absurdity of the suggestion that the unborn routinely pose some kind of threat to their mothers. It is now possible for physicians to identify those extraordinarily rare instances where birth might cause harm, and to take measures to protect the health of mother and child long before the birth occurs. When you combine that medical reality with the fact that not one piece of federal pro-life legislation proposed since 1973 would have prevented abortions necessary to save the life of the mother, this whole issue quickly gets exposed as a phony one.

If you want to see just how phony it is, ask abortion proponents if they would be willing to ban abortions after that point in pregnancy at which the risk to the mother is greater than for childbirth. They'll come up with some lame excuse for saying no. Which, of course, should make you wonder what their real agenda is.

Letter Number: 96

A local pro-abortion leader has argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth.

To see just how phony this concern is, go out and ask a thousand mothers how much time they spent while they were pregnant worrying that they would die during birth. Or ask a thousand legitimate physicians--in other words, those who don't do abortions--how often they've had a woman die giving birth. Now, if we are going to buy into this idea that abortion is justified because it's safer than childbirth, then it only makes sense that we start requiring women to end all their pregnancies through abortion. After all, that would undeniably save the most women's lives possible. Lest you scoff at me, I will point out that at least one abortion advocate has suggested that women be required to sign consent forms for carrying to term!

If abortionists were really concerned with maternal risk, they would long ago have banned abortions after 16 weeks, the point at which even rabid pro-aborts agree that the risk to the mother is equal to--or greater than--the risk of childbirth. Clearly, this "risks of childbirth" thing is brought up not out of concern for women's well-being, but as just another excuse for making money by selling abortions.

Letter Number: 97

Pro-abortion activists have said that abortion is justified because it is safer than childbirth.

First, the statistics they use for this argument come from abortionists. Second, abortion is certainly not safer for the baby. I think if we could ask babies, they would rather take their chances in a delivery room than an abortion clinic. As for the mother, if we carry this pathetic line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, then we also need to start allowing people to kill their born children as well as their unborn children. After all, children don't just pose a risk to their mothers before birth, they also pose one afterward. Sometimes they cause the death of a parent through an accident. Crime statistics also show that a certain number of children will grow up to one day abuse--or even murder--their parents. So we could save the lives of those mothers who might one day be killed by one of their own children, by allowing them to kill those children first.

Obviously these arguments are asinine. For people to say that killing children can be justified because they might pose a small statistical risk to one of their parents shows exactly how morally bankrupt the whole idea of legalized abortion is. It's just one more sorry example of an abortion-industry smoke screen designed to keep its apologists from having to defend the act of abortion.

Letter Number: 98

A local pro-abortion leader has argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth.

She then went off on a statistical tirade that supposedly proves her point. She failed to mention that all these statistics come from abortionists. That's as credible as taking smoking death statistics from a tobacco company.

But let's for a moment assume that childbirth can be as risky as abortion advocates claim it is. Those rare pregnancy complications that do threaten the mother's life are far more common in women who have a history of abortion. In case you haven't noticed, the ectopic pregnancy rate in this country has skyrocketed in almost direct proportion to the abortion rate. Both the direct physical damage abortion can do to a woman's reproductive organs and the infection that is common following abortion contribute to this problem. Abortion weakens the cervix, making miscarriage and its attendant risks more common. The top of the uterus, where the baby usually implants, is often damaged during abortion. This means that the baby more often implants close to the cervix, causing placenta previa, another complication that can kill this wanted baby, and also threaten the mother's life. Tears and strains on the uterine muscles can lead to a woman's uterus rupturing during labor with a later pregnancy. What a horrible way for both mother and baby to die!

To subject women to all this unnecessary danger, and then claim to be interested in preventing maternal deaths, is the ultimate hypocrisy.

Letter Number: 99

A local abortion clinic director has argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth.

What she's trying to do is give people the image of pregnancy and childbirth as some horrible, life-threatening experience, and abortion as innocuous and even lifesaving.

The truth is that those few rare problems that would make pregnancy risky are more common in women who have damaged their reproductive systems through abortion. The argument of abortion advocates is that we should use abortions to spare women the risks caused by abortions to begin with! It's stupid.

I wonder--if, after reviewing the valid scientific studies, this abortion clinic director was convinced it was more dangerous than childbirth, would she be willing to outlaw abortion? Of course not. It isn't women's lives they're concerned about, it's abortionists' lifestyles.

Letter Number: 100

A pro-abortion activist recently argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth.

Now, we'll ignore the fact that her statistics are bogus. Instead, we'll assume that the child does somehow pose a risk to the mother--that seven out of every 100,000 fetuses indeed cause their mothers to die in childbirth. Does it make sense to kill 33,000 out of every 100,000? That's how many we actually kill--one-third of all children conceived. Shouldn't we just kill the seven dangerous fetuses? Pardon the expression, but it seems like overkill to wipe out 33,000 babies for every seven that are causing a risk to their mothers. That's killing nearly 5,000 times more children than are any danger to anybody. Is it really necessary to kill the other 32,993?

The truth is, this "dangers of childbirth" line is just a public relations ploy to make abortion seem like some lifesaving surgery instead of what it is: gratuitous killing.

Letter Number: 101

A pro-abortion activist recently argued that abortion is needed to prevent deaths from childbirth.

However, for the sake of argument, I'll assume at least some of her statistics aren't bogus. I'll agree that seven out of every 100,000 fetuses cause their mothers to die in childbirth. That's about one out of every 14,000.

Should we use this as the cut-off point for killing people who pose a risk to others? If one out of every 14,000 alcoholics is involved in a fatal traffic accident, would that justify executing all alcoholics? If one out of every 14,000 people with AIDS gave the deadly disease to someone else, would that justify legalizing the killing of the HIV-positive? By this pro-abortion fanatic's math, it would.

And what if the risk of childbirth fell further? What if, for example, only three of every 100,000 fetuses caused a maternal death? Would we stop killing fetuses, or would we have to kill less-lethal born persons as well?

This all goes to show how phony the "risks of childbirth" line is. If abortion advocates were really concerned about the risks of childbirth, they would have been satisfied with those abortions necessary to save the life of the mother. And those were never illegal to begin with.

Letter Number: 102

A pro-abortion fanatic recently claimed that abortion is necessary to keep women from dying in childbirth.

What century is this woman living in? Even Planned Parenthood's medical director, Mary Calderone, said--in 1960--that, "Medically speaking...it is hardly ever necessary today to consider the life of a mother as threatened by a pregnancy."

The reality is, the only time anybody ever claims that pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous is when they are trying to justify abortions.

Letter Number: 103

Last week, a 14-year-old girl died from a botched abortion at the local abortion mill. Incredibly, the news coverage focused not on the danger of abortion, but the dangers of childbirth!

For this letter, I will ignore the fact that even pro-abortion groups admit that abortions like the one this young girl had--those after 16 weeks--are more dangerous than childbirth. We will look only at the earlier abortions, which are supposed to be so much safer than birth.

If early abortion is so much safer than birth, shouldn't we require that all pregnancies be aborted? Some abortion supporters have advocated doing just that. Warren Hern, the most respected abortionist in America, calls pregnancy a disease, and cites a colleague who thinks women should have to sign release forms before allowing a pregnancy to continue to term!

If we want to use this pathetic line of reasoning, we should also kill born children. After all, some children will eventually kill their parents. I would bet that many parents are killed in auto accidents driving their kids to school or to the orthodontist. If children are a health risk to their mothers, shouldn't we kill them all?

But of course, this whole idea doesn't hold water. No sane mother would kill her child, even to spare her own life. What mother would kill her child just to put already safe odds even further in her own favor?

Letter Number: 104

News coverage of the recent abortion malpractice case left much to be desired. It was good that the media described the details of the woman's injuries, but they misled the public when they said abortion complications are very rare.

It is nearly impossible to say how often abortion complications occur. The National Center for Health Statistics stopped asking abortion facilities to report complications because they were so grotesquely underreported that the data was meaningless. Abortionists often don't even bother to document complications on the clinic records. An undercover investigator at one abortion mill reported employees checking off "no complications" on patient charts even though an alarming number of patients informed the clinic of serious complications. In fact, patients who have died during abortions have been noted on their charts as alert and able to walk, without complications.

When we have this kind of reporting, it is grossly irresponsible to claim to know how often women suffer abortion complications. The truth is, we don't know. And if you look at the kind of suffering the woman suing for malpractice went through, you have to wonder if it's worth the risk at all.

Letter Number: 105

I was pleased that the news media covered the recent abortion malpractice case. But they misled the public when they said abortion complications are very rare.

Abortion advocates report estimated complication rates in percentages. These numbers look small, so it seems safe to dismiss the risks as minimal. But if you convert the percentages into odds of suffering the complication, it looks much different. For example, incomplete abortions have been reported as happening in 0.61 percent to 4.5 percent of early abortions. That may sound low, until you realize that this means they don't know if your chance of having an incomplete abortion is one in 164 or one in 22. Does it make a difference if hemorrhage happens in 0.05 percent of early abortions, or 4.9 percent? Both sound low. But there's a big difference between odds of one in 2,000 and odds of one in 20.

One other point. Statistics don't matter to the women and their families. When it happens to you, it's 100 percent. And when even something as innocuous sounding as an incomplete abortion can kill you, do you really want to take any risk at all?

Letter Number: 106

An outspoken abortion proponent defends abortion on the grounds that childbirth is ever so much more dangerous.

If she is so worried about maternal mortality, why isn't she crusading against birth control pills?

According to Williams Obstetrics, oral contraceptives killed 452 women in 1975 and 327 women in 1982. Even if the death rate is slowly falling, that still means that we are killing hundreds of women every year, just to make them sexually available to men 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

That bears repeating: just so men won't ever have to be told "no," hundreds of women die from oral contraceptives every year.

Is it surprising that people willing to kill so many women with the Pill express no sorrow over women who die from legal abortions?

What are the real motives of the Pill-pushers and abortionists? It can't be women's well-being, or they wouldn't be accomplices in so many women's deaths. Could it be simple greed?