LIFE: It's all worth defending

With reference to Shawn Glen, the woman’s life is worth defending. She has been subjected to much social and cultural degradation, over the course of many centuries. If she is poor, she doesn’t have access to the kind of health care, the wealthier people can avail themselves of. For her, Planned Parenthood becomes a resource for cancer screening among other things. If she is poor and has children, the same people who would condemn her for terminating her pregnancy are also prepared to condemn her if she bears children she can’t afford to raise. Anti-choicers, you can’t have it both ways.

The born child’s life is worth defending. If he or she is raised in financially unstable circumstances, there are any number of reasons why such a child will never become a rocket scientist, or the doctor that cures cancer. A child who dies within a year of his or her life, from a preventable disease. It is just as much a tragic loss, as any other Mr. Glen can name.

A veteran’s life is worth defending. You may not agree with his personal beliefs or political views, but he or she most certainly defended yours in a time of war — both cold and hot. Taking care of that veteran once his or her service to this country is completed, should be a moral obligation.

Your neighbor’s life is worth defending. It doesn’t matter what he or she looks like, racially. Or how he or she believes, religiously or politically. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t matter how that person lives his or her life! Your neighbor was conceived too. Which means you have a moral obligation to respect that particular individual. Only, in none of these anti-choicers’ arguments have I seen any real desire to defend any of the above.

Thus when the Ten Commandments speak of making no false oaths before the Lord your God, this is what it means: Make no promise that you are unwilling to keep. Mr. Glen’s letter is a good example of his failure to keep that particular commandment.

JOAN E. HARMAN

Coeur d’Alene