To the editor:

I like to think of myself as a women’s rights person all the way. I do stray from the pack when it comes to abortion. I’m sympathetic; a pregnancy even under the best circumstances, is all-encompassing. Use all the adjectives in the dictionary, none can describe the impact of this life event.

I admit I have to speculate from the perspective of someone who has never been a mother. Just being a woman, though, I have found that innately being a mother is just there. It’s kind of included, one of the many ingredients or instincts thrown in the recipe. It’s that spice that you can’t quite identify but needs to be there. Hey, that is not a description of all women, just me, only meant to help in my own attempt to clarify my conflicting feelings about abortion.

Women get the privilege and at times unwanted responsibility of another life. All those babies we coo over and wonder at the miracle each one is ... they all come from a woman’s womb. Lately, every time I see a picture of a baby, I think how easily that picture, so cute and precious, might just disappear should it be possible to go back in time and abort that pregnancy. I can’t get around that. Terminating a pregnancy means terminating a life, a baby. One of the slogans used to support a woman’s “right” to abortion is my body my choice, but it is not the woman’s body! It is another’s body, not hers; it belongs to the baby.

I believe in choice. I just think choice should come before the pregnancy, not after. I know some things can’t be legislated. Unfortunately, babies get made in all kinds of regrettable even tragic circumstances. Exceptions for rape and incest are at the very highest mountaintop. Of course, the life of the mother has to be close to, if not the worst of any exception scenario. I see that. I do think the bottom line is, that it’s wrong to kill a baby. When it comes to “choice,” during those moments when ... Make the choice before you make the baby. That goes for men as well.

Lark Peterson

Pawnee Rock