Gloucester Daily Times Debate on Abortion (15), December 20, 1985

Fetus, Freedom are Real Issues

I believe it is Mr. Boland and his followers who are unable to grasp the issue. It is strange that men seem to be so totally involved in the abortion issue since they, who have control over their own bodies, will never have to face this issue.

And Mr. Boland can glide so glibly over the fact that Hitler was a man, a man responsible in the history of male atrocities; that in South Africa a lone woman fights again apartheid; that our own male dominated government which was elected with the promise of “less” government in the affairs of our people, wants to increase its domination over so personal an issue as a women’s right to choose, but pervasively, to cut funds to support and keep viable the results of this imposition.

Historically, men have ruled women and Mr. Boland makes it clear that some men are committed to continue. The issue of the “murder” of the fetus cannot be to blithely determined, since more educated minds than his or mine cannot make the judgement. His concern for should be directed against condemning women to well documented back-alley murder by illegal practitioners. The issue should be the fetus, if it is considered along with freedom, choice and reason.

Harriet Rothstein, Whale Cove, Rockport