LTE: Favors Qually
Editor, Gettysburg Times,
What leads some people to claim that abortion—from the moment of inception—is murder? Most people realize that a fetus turns into a human at some point during pregnancy. Even the 13th-century Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas understood this and wrote that fetuses did not have souls until weeks after inception. Our nation’s founders, following common law, believed that a fetus became a human with “quickening,” which occurs when the woman begins to feel it moving in her womb (around 16 to 20 weeks into pregnancy). Given the science of the day, that wasn’t a bad guess, but we now know that some plants are capable of movement that seems voluntary. Such plants lack nervous systems that would make them able to feel, however, and so do fetuses during the first stages of pregnancy. According to neurologists, fetuses develop feeling at roughly the beginning of the third trimester of pregnancy. That is the point when Roe v. Wade prohibited abortions except those necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life. I believe that provision was reasonable, and I hope that Pennsylvania will keep it.
I also hope that, as we define reproductive rights for our state, we will show compassion for real, living human beings—women whose lives will suffer if they are forced to continue unwanted pregnancies. To elevate the “rights” of a fetus over those of women is an unjustified intrusion of government into our private lives. If we do not stop this encroachment now, what will come next? Clarence Thomas has already said that he believes the Supreme Court should reconsider Griswold v. Connecticut—that was the 1965 decision that overturned a Connecticut law prohibiting even married people from using contraception.
That Marty Qually understands these considerations is one of many reasons that I am glad I will have the opportunity in November to vote for him over Dan Moul, who does not.
Kerr Thompson,
Gettysburg