To the Editor:
Re “Across Country, Lawmakers Push Abortion Curbs” (front page, Jan. 22): Anti-choice lawmakers across the country may be heralding a new era in which they plan to mount aggressive campaigns to limit abortion. But they won’t necessarily have the last word on what abortion restrictions ultimately end up on state books.
With the rush of anti-choice legislation will come vigorous court challenges to these infringements on constitutional rights.
In the last two years—since the 2008 election—anti-choice state legislators have pushed especially ambitious agendas, enacting some of the most extreme anti-choice legislation in recent memory.
But time and again, judges have declared these laws unconstitutional, and for good reason.
They violate women’s rights by profoundly intruding on their private medical decisions and by imposing trumped-up regulations on abortion providers so they can no longer realistically provide women services.
Nancy Northup
President
Center for Reproductive Rights
New York, Jan. 26, 2011
Note from KBJ: The letter writer uses "anti-choice" (instead of "pro-life") four times in a short letter. You can see why. To a libertine, choice is a good thing. Anyone who is opposed to a good thing must be evil! How would the letter writer like to be called "pro-abortion" or "anti-life"? By the way, those who wish to criminalize abortion are anti-choice in the same sense in which those who wish to keep murder criminalized are anti-choice. Think about it.
Note 2 from KBJ: Why is abortion not viewed as genocide against blacks? Where are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton when you need them?
Note 3 from KBJ: The letter writer tried to pressure CBS into not airing Tim Tebow's pro-life advertisement during the 2010 Super Bowl. If she's pro-choice, then she should want women to make their own decisions about whether to abort. It sounds as though she wants women to make only one choice, namely, abortion. I wonder why that is. Can you think of a reason?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 