Letter: Choice means making an educated decision

Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007 | 8:03 a.m.

Perhaps letter writer Regina Couvrette ("Abortion violates a fundamental right," Nov. 9) would prefer the days when people blindly assumed abortions never happened. Perhaps she would prefer the days when women who had no other choice were forced into back alleys where brutal, unsanitary methods were used to rid women of pregnancies out of sheer desperation.

It would be the days of the twisted wire hangers used to "clean" out the uterus. In addition to the fetuses that would be lost, any children the women try to have later might be at risk. The women themselves sometimes would be killed by the methods used to rid them of the pregnancy.

Desperation will drive people as human beings to do things they would not normally do. Those with no compassion for others who have not been driven to make this most difficult choice should count themselves lucky.

As for me, I will continue to fight for choice. The whole point to having a choice in the first place is to choose (more often than the anti-abortionists may realize) to have the child. It's about making educated decisions.

As for 12-year-olds learning that abortions are legally available: Children younger than 12 are having children. Ask labor and delivery nurses in any inner-city hospital about the youngest children they have had to help through labor. Many of those children have heard about abortion and have chosen (ah, choice again!) to keep the baby. To take that choice from women now is a return to medieval times.

Shonna Rhein-Gariepy, Las Vegas