Piece 1: Letter to the Editor in Response to Charles Murray

Charles Murray's Oct. 29 editorial page piece "The Coming White Underclass" raises a profound moral paradox that he himself appears not to fully appreciate.

Withconsiderable thoughtfulness and conservative passion over the mounting tragedy
of illegitimate births in this country, Mr. Murray calls essentially for a return to the social
values and policies of "as recently as John Kennedy's presidency": i.e., holding up marriage as the only socially acceptable venue for bearing and raising children and removing all government support for single women who bear and raise the children, however well or poorly, by themselves.

Hisrespect for the institution of marriage is laudable. He's right to say that the opti­mum human environment from within which a child can become a productive, responsible compassionate member of society is the marriage commitment. But in prescribing his bitter pillsof social stigmatization and sink-or-swim governmental policy, he almost ignores the patient's most convenient remedy for this social illness—abortion.

Atthe staggering rate of 1.6 million times a year, American women and teenage girls, married or unmarried, are aborting their unborn children. The unmarried are doing it for many reasons, one of which is that an illegitimate birth is still a "socially horrifying act" throughout much of society. But an increasingly more compelling reason for this profoundly distructive act is that "the old way" on the subject of abortion has also been dramatically alteredsince John Kennedy's presidency. It has been legal to elect abortion for any reason in this country since 1973. Even more alarmingly, it has become a "reproductive right" that virtuallydefines a woman's bodily and emotional integrity while it defines away the other human life involved.

Mr. Murray's reasoning seems either astoundingly sloppy or astoundingly "pro-choice" in this regard. In order to argue against the irresponsibility of pre-marital sex and singlemotherhood, he uses language like "bringing a child into the world" and "having a baby." But after the pre-marital sex and before the single motherhood, there's another human life involved with a right to be born. Mr. Murray acknowledges that many women may have abortions when AFDC and other public supports are withdrawn as he recommends. He then casually concludes that "whether this is good depends on what one thinks of abortion."

Among socially horrific acts, abortion has to rank far above even illegitimacy.

Patricia Bucalo, Burlingame, Calif.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 791