Wrong to make abortion illegal
Letter to the Editor San Angelo Standard Times December 17, 2007 Editor: I continue to see letters talking about how terrible it is if a woman chooses to have an abortion and how it should be illegal. It used to be illegal to have an abortion. Did that law stop abortions? No. The rich girls went to a doctor in Europe or Canada, and the poor ones went to some back alley and often were seriously injured or died. Poor women and teens did not have the right to the services of a medical doctor and proper treatment, including counseling. Making abortion illegal is not going to stop it. Many people say they want less government in their lives, yet they want government to stop women from choosing a personal medical procedure. If a person has a religious objection to getting an abortion then they should not get one, but they have no right to demand others follow their religious views. What works is proper counseling and birth control pills, and until the people who keep trying to do away with abortions and Planned Parenthood are ignored, Texas will continue to lead the nation in teen pregnancies. If these people succeed, look for the rusty clothes hangers and mutilated and dead girls and women, because that is what making abortion illegal again will lead to (as it did before), and it will be those well-meaning but absolutely wrong anti-abortion folks' fault. Jim Denton Gatesville
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