Dear Ms Thompson:
We see where you highlight the question, 'Is the foetus a person?' It is clear that Drs Errol Daley and Wynante Patterson do not have the answer to this question, yet in their ignorance they wish to persist with advocating direct abortion, thereby daring to risk murder. Drs Daley and Patterson want to legalise daring to risk murder.
By dehumanising or taking away the personhood of a class of human beings, the stage is set to exploit or kill them. The onus is on Drs Errol Daley and Wynante Patterson to prove that the pre-born child is not a person for it is they who are calling for direct abortion because we must always err on the side of human life everywhere.
We have to warn against the two-thirds mentality that both the Nazis and the white chattel slave masters employed. The Nazis saw the Jews as human, knew that they were alive but refused to name them as persons. In fact, they officially classified them as 'non-persons'. As for slaves, they were officially classified by the United States Supreme Court in 1857 in the Dred Scott v Sanford decision as 'non-persons'.
Chattel slaves and Jews were both acknowledged as humans, alive but not as persons at different times in the past. What is the difference between them and the unborn today? There is no difference. Same philosophy, same discrimination and it will spread to the elderly who become dependent on others when in ill health or reduced capacity in their old age.
If the world recognised that Hitler was doing wrong and could come to recognise that chattel slavery was wrong, then they (Drs Daley and Patterson) too will eventually see that direct abortion is wrong. Even though Roe v Wade legalised direct abortion in the United States 35 years ago yesterday, the issue of direct abortion is still a major topic in the US presidential race in 2008!
The foetus must be treated as a person from the moment of conception. Human life is good and is to be pursued and protected and hence the opposite, i.e. the direct taking of a life is an evil and is not to be allowed.
Romain Stewart
PR Officer
Celebrate Life Ministry
Jamaica
Dear Ms Thompson:
I pray that you are having a blessed day. I read your article in The Gleaner last week. I just wish to let you know that abortion is plain and simple murder of the innocent; it is murder of the defenceless and may God have mercy on us all. I send you these pictures as I am sure you are not aware of what happens when a life is taken. I pray that the murder will stop.
Celia
Dear Ms Thompson:
I would like to add my two cents to the debate for what it is worth.
"I don't think anybody has the answers to these questions. Everybody is right. We are not God." This is a quote I took from your article of Wednesday, January 23, 2008. This is a bold and fair statement, but 'everybody is wrong' may be also plausible. Once the foetus is in the environment of the womb, the mother has a choice to abort or not to abort because it's her body.
The period greater than one week but less than 30 weeks seems to be that period when it is safer for the mother not to suffer any physiological impairment. But, in terms of the foetus, it is the period of uncertainty whether it is a person with a soul or not. If we abort then we do so knowing fully well that we err on one side or the other. Since it is assumed that this is an ethical issue which need not be a moral one, we would prefer to leave the choice to the mother.
We now change the stage of the foetus to greater than 30 weeks and it is discovered that if is allowed to develop there is a risk of bringing a handicapped child into the world. Is this now an ethical issue purely in the hand of the mother? Or the environment is changed, the child is born and is not what we really expected, whose choice is it now to determine if it be allowed to live beyond that first day of birth?
'The egg and the sperm don't have a soul to detect its environment'; this may very well be true, but is life present? If there is blood, then there is life. Because the life of the flesh is in the blood.
"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5). It seems as if God has some say in the matter as well. The developed foetus is now a handicapped child in a new environment. Who has the right to keep or to kill?
Robert A. Stewart
Pentecostal Gospel Temple,
111 Windward Road,
Kingston 2
Dear Ms Thompson:
I wish to commend you for your attempt to keep the issue of abortion in the public eye.
However, you may have given the impression of promoting a pro-abortion position by your own comments as well as by the identity of the persons you interviewed. It seems to me that you missed a good opportunity to present both sides of the argument in order that your readers could be better informed. The date of a law cannot be used as a litmus test of its enduring value to society. 'Thou shalt not steal' would be discredited if subjected to that principle.
Your collaborators referred to the nebulous concept of 'personhood' in order to justify killing the unborn child and implied that the unborn was not a 'legal citizen of the country'. 'Personhood' has always been a subjective term defined according to the intentions of the individual who uses it, and to the disadvantage of an intended target of extermination or oppression. This was done by whites during slavery, by Nazis in Germany and by Hutus in Rwanda.
A puppy or kitten never develops a 'human soul' and cannot be the holder of a Jamaican passport. Nevertheless, one would be justifiably horrified if the state were to establish centres where they would be dismembered alive. This is what happens to the unborn child during an abortion.
There are undoubtedly many social ills that affect our country; abortion is a short-sighted, destructive and ineffective way to rectify them.
Dr Doreen Brady-West
Send questions and comments to our health specialists at Your Health, c/o The Gleaner, 7 North Street, Kingston; email: yourhealth@gleanerjm.com. Unless otherwise indicated, letters and the specialists' responses are usually published in our letters section and in our articles.
