I have been especially interested in your recent columns on abortion, writes Connie Rosenquist of Port Townsend. I have appreciated your compassion regarding the horrors of child abuse and also your sharing of comments from readers who disagree with your conclusions.
What puzzles and saddens me is that while you acknowledge the truth of life beginning at conception, and the validity of respecting that life, you still stick to your conclusions that its better for a child to never be born than to suffer abuse, meaning abortion is OK, even desirable if a child is unwanted. You intellectually agree with certain obvious and undeniable truths but then lurch crazily into an illogical conclusion, as if drawn by irresistible forces. This is a little schizophrenic.
May I point out some myths that may be clouding your thinking in this matter?
Myth 1 Children can be unwanted, surplus, of no value to anyone, cant be protected.
Myth 2 Unwanted children will be abused.
Myth 3 Never being born is the same as never existing, living or being fully human.
Myth 4 A person would rather be pre-emptively killed than suffer abuse.
Myth 5 Child abuse is a capital offense.
A better conclusion to Myth 1, says Mrs. Rosenquist, is adoption. There are many adoptive parents waiting for a child. As for Myth 2, many children begin by being unwanted or unplanned but most parents adjust their thinking and love them. Abuse is not the inevitable result of unplanned pregnancy.
On Myth 3, never being born often wrongly used as a euphemism for never having existed, what about the nine months between conception and being born? We can prevent this child from being born by killing it. We cant prevent it from existing, it already does. Myth 4, as your other readers have stated, people abused as children would still choose to live and are grateful for life. They will tell you so. If they would rather not live, its still not our place to do anything. That would be called murder.
Myth 5, as far as I know, child abuse is not a capital offense. But if it were, wouldnt it make more sense to put to death the perpetrator rather than the victim and do it after a crime has occurred? You seem to be suggesting that it is the potential victim that should be put to death and before any crime has occurred.
A side thought: If child abusers were ever to receive the death penalty, one certain result would be a new and more accurate awareness of the value of a child. Consider the penalties for disturbing or harming eagles. Perhaps unwanted would never again be used to refer to any pregnancy.
I expect you, like so very many others, are being driven by real but misguided compassion rather than reason or truth. I dont fault you for it, but with your very public column and accompanying influence, I would join the others in respectfully asking you to reconsider your position. It seems to me to be completely indefensible. Your readership deserves a more humane and logical solution for the very early program of child abuse, rather than to simply put to death potential victims in their most helpless state.
I would rest easier in my mind if I believed that the government agencies charged with the responsibility of looking out for the welfare of children, particularly those not in permanent and stable home environments, were doing their jobs. I do not. I can hardly wait until the state auditor gets around to doing a performance audit of Child Protective Services and pinpoints, I hope, the reasons for its pitiful record through the years.

Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.