(This letter is in response to "A day of mourning," Feb. 23 Viewpoint by Doug Kingman and Ford Adams)
Gentlemen, it is with some admiration that I reflect on the time and effort it must have taken you and your organization to put some 1,000 white flags on the academic quad. It is my hope that, at the very least, your classmates allow your protest to run its course without incident.
With that said, however, you both ought to be held to account for your published Viewpoint. First and foremost, why didn't you have a woman classmate co-sign? Were you not able to find one who wanted to put her name on an anti-choice Viewpoint? If so, should this tell you something about what your peers think about the right to choose? And if not, then why did you not think about your women peers when writing about a subject which doubtless is of great (and perhaps personal) importance to them?
Alas, if sanctity of life is the debate, the Republicans have not shown a strong enough commitment to justify exclusive standing on the issue. In a GOP America, it seems the right to live ends when one is born: We need only look to worldwide infant mortality rates. There, the United States is ranked 36, between Taiwan (35) and Croatia (37), and behind Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Cuba (according to the CIA world factbook).
Furthermore, once our infants grow up, we have proven remarkably unable to keep our societal promises to them: One need only look to Katrina to see the inability of the world's sole superpower to save a significant portion of its poorest people. We need only look to South and Central America to see that criminalizing abortion does not stop the practice. What it does is force poorer women to have dangerous back-alley procedures while wealthier women fly to jurisdictions where the procedure is legal.
I wholeheartedly agree with your proposition that abortion is generally a sad enterprise for everyone involved. Yet it is silly to think that women would choose such a sad enterprise when they have other options: Many of them can't afford the requisite pre-natal care or are not able to take time away from physically demanding jobs. What is puzzling, however, is that the right continues to bemoan abortion while opposing family planning that would reduce abortion - the very education and access to medical care that would reduce the number of flags you plant.
I also concur with your contention that there are more issues at stake in Judge Alito's nomination than simply the right to reproductive freedom. A man who recently (in Doe v. Groody, 2004) argued in dissent that police officers had properly strip-searched a 10-year-old for whom they had no warrant is simply not in line with the American people, no matter how well educated he may be (and he indeed is).
Judge Alito's nomination is an important decision for our Senators. Let us hope that their rush for partisan instincts doesn't leave us wistfully remembering the Clinton years, when abortion was safe, legal and rare.
Ben RubinsteinLA '05
