A really disingenuous approach

To the editor:

(re: “Leave religion out of abortion talk,” Aug. 22)

Dimitri Cavalli correctly argues that religion should be left out of the abortion debate. After that, however, he engages that argument in the most disingenuous manner imaginable.

The real question is not about religion, no legal or Constitution case should be decided on that basis. Rather, the abortion debate is — and must be — about choice, a word Mr. Cavalli manages to avoid.

He makes obvious his bias by employing the term “pro-abortion groups,” and claims that they’ve “dishonestly framed legal abortion as a separation of church and state issue … in order to bully pro-lifers.”

There are several things patently wrong with this mischaracterization. Here are but two: People are not “pro-abortion.” There are many who are opposed to abortion, i.e., they would not want one for themselves or their female partner, but who favor a woman’s right to choose whether to have one or not.

The pro-choice position is not a religious one. It is, as the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Roe v. Wade, a legal one.

Bully pro-lifers? Really, Mr. Cavalli? Who is doing the bullying when health clinics that provide abortion services have been firebombed? Who was the bully when abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered in Kansas in 2009? Who was the bully when three people at a Planned Parenthood facility were fatally shot in Colorado?

Sadly, these are not the only victims of “pro-life” violence.

If you are going to try to argue against a pro-choice position, at least do it honestly.

Steve Siegelbaum

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