Robert Droege (“Letters,” November 2008) quite rightly reminds us of our duty to offer aid to people troubled by hunger, poverty, homelessness, and the like. But to set abortion on moral par with these incidental adjuncts to human existence is to trivialize it.
Apart from especially oppressive governments, no one sets out willfully to infl ict these kinds of troubles on the innocent. But quite to the contrary, performing a surgical abortion in nearly every instance absolutely represents the willful, purposeful intent of one or more persons to cause the death of a person living but not yet born; a person who has been accused of no offense under law and who has been denied access to the protections of legal due process upon which our criminal justice system otherwise sets great store.
Hunger, poverty, and homelessness are treatable conditions, amenable to relief, correction, and elimination. My own associations with pro-life activists over a span of nearly four decades informs me that as a group they need take second place to no one in their voluntary efforts to offer succor, to help relieve these distressful but remediable conditions.
But death is permanent, not reversible through humane acts of charity. And the blood of tens of millions of aborted children cries out for justice. May God have mercy on us, for we have denied it to these most helpless of our kind.
Leonard C. Johnson
Moscow, Idaho
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