The Editor, Sir:

I would like to point out some inconsistencies I found with Professor Carolyn Cooper's contribution to The Sunday Gleaner headlined, 'Aborting women's rights'.

Professor Cooper seems to tout the methodology of 'who feels it knows it' as the way of knowing whether intentional abortion is right or wrong. Professor Cooper seems to be saying that because she is a woman she not only feels, but also knows that intentional abortion is a woman's right.

If this were true and Professor Cooper's gender was responsible for what she claims is knowledge, what is responsible for the alleged knowledge those few men the professor refers to? Like all men, these few are unable to intimately physically feel pregnancy yet are still able to concur with Professor Cooper's alleged knowledge that intentional abortion is supposed to be a woman's right?

The professor implies that what is responsible for these few masculine anomalies is enlightenment. Here we see the professor skipping from cause to cause, that is, from gender to enlightenment, while still arriving at the same effect, that is, her alleged knowledge of a woman's right to abortion. Based on this, the name of the method should be changed to 'Who feels it is not the only one who knows what the professor knows'.

Think like a girl

Enlightenment, as the professor implies, is the ability of a few men to 'think like a girl'. But Professor, having neutralised the more substantial cause of being a girl, you have automatically neutralised its less substantial derivative of thinking like a girl. You have therefore wiped out the validity of your definition of enlightenment and claims that said enlightenment is a cause of the effect you claim to know. None of your causes remain standing, nor does the effect they were supposed to support.

The argument presented by Professor Cooper, that is, who feels pregnancy knows that intentional abortion is a woman's right, is not sound because it is not valid and all its premises are not true.

Using more reliable and valid methods I can show the Professor that all intentional abortions are wrong and that all the unborn should be treated as persons from the moment of their conception.

I am, etc.,

Romain G. Stewart

Lecturer in Engineering

Montego Bay

romainstewart@inbox.com