Re: “What do you call it?” (Nov. 17, page 8)

In response to What do you call it?, published November, 17, 2011.

Jon Kornelson makes the statement that the “rhetoric surrounding a ‘woman’s right to choose’ tends to act as more of a smokescreen which redirects attention from the real issue: the humanity, or lack thereof, of the fetus.”

His attempt to use a women’s issue – yes, abortion is a women’s issue – for a little bit of intellectual masturbation is actually quite offensive, especially considering he addresses abortion as an abstract issue while completely disregarding the human aspect.

Abortion is latent with many issues, including gender and income inequality to say the least. These are not issues that can be understood by sitting in your armchair and playing intellectual, but by speaking to people who have struggled and trying to understand their lives.

Women do not choose abortion on a whim. In fact, no woman is likely to have been left unscathed by such a difficult decision. Your statement that the fetus is “surgically dismembered” is not only factually inaccurate, but incredibly insulting. I would doubt if any woman – other than those so blinded by ideology that they can no longer even relate to people with beliefs unlike their own – would ever condescend to use the term “dismembered.”

To discuss abortion as some factor to be considered in an intellectual game and not as a real life painful experience is incredibly ignorant.

– Samantha Elmore

Published in Volume 66, Number 14 of The Uniter (November 30, 2011)