To The Eagle:

Howard Brawn’s recent opinion letter presents muddled insinuations that infanticide is about to become the new normal in New York because of its revised abortion statute. Nothing could be further from the truth, always the first casualty in the discussion about abortion and a woman’s right to autonomy regarding her reproductive choices.

For women whose difficult pregnancy has become dangerously toxic or whose fetus’ heart has stopped beating, a late term abortion can preserve such a mother’s life. Other exigent circumstances justifying such have occurred, like the eleven-year-old forced by her bestial father to hide her condition until it became undeniable. New York’s recently revised 1970 abortion statute, as well as all other such laws throughout the 50 states have always provided “late term exceptions” as mandated by the Supreme Court, when the “life and health of the mother is in imminent peril” from the complications of pregnancy. Opponents to Virginia’s not yet approved reproductive health code revision rant mindlessly that if late term abortion becomes possible, women in labor will, on the delivery table, opt instead for an abortion instead of giving birth. Such a statement, actually made by a Republican legislator, reveals a persistent misogynistic illogic that remains one of the stumbling blocks to having a rational discussion about women’s reproductive rights and choices.

It is impossible to comprehensively review the aforementioned recent New York and Virginia legislative issues within the 300 word limit herein. You owe it to yourself to go online and read my two superb sources for this article. They are “How Abortion Law In New York Will Change And How It Will Not” by Jia Telentino of New Yorker Magazine, and “Fiction About Late Term Abortion Provides Grist For The Culture War” by Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times.

It is my opinion that no law, no room full of white male politicians Republican or Democrat, no police state, should stand between a woman trying to decide her reproductive choices, and her doctor.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island