An Open Letter to the Star Tribune
Dear Editor,
Are you aware of the fact that the same day the Senate Health
and Human Services Committee approved the unconditional
permission to terminate the lives of 24-week-old fetuses,
the neonatology unit at Abbot Northwestern was caring for
a 22-and-a-half week-old (500 gram) preemie with good chances
of healthy life?
Now that is news and calls for profound reflection. Instead,
your lead editorial the morning after (Feb. 26) glossed over
this critical issue and endorsed abortion because it is "one
of the most personal decisions a woman can make" and
because "the abortion decision is undeniably sensitive." This
level of reflection is unworthy of major editorials in good
newspapers.
I assume you mean by "personal decision" not: having
deep personal implications; but: having deep personal implications
for only one person, the mother.
But abortion is emphatically not a "personal" decision
in that limited sense. There is another person, namely, the
unborn child. If you deny this, you must give an account
of what that little preemie is at Abbot Northwestern. Abortion
is a decision about competing human rights: the right not
to be pregnant and the right not to be killed.
I assume you approve of the Committee's action. But I also
assume you would not approve of the mother's right to strangle
the preemie at Abbot before its 25th week of life. If so
you owe your readers an explanation of your simple endorsement
of abortion because it is "personal" and "sensitive".
In fact, I challenge you to publish two photographs side
by side: one of this "child" outside the womb
and another of a "fetus" inside the womb both at
23 or 24 weeks, with a caption that says something like: "We
at the Star Tribune regard the termination of the preemie
as manslaughter and the termination of the fetus as the personal
choice of the mother."
I have read in your pages how you disdain the use of pictures
because abortion is too complex for simplistic solutions.
But I also remember how you approved the possible televising
of an execution as one of the most effective ways of turning
the heart of America against capital punishment (a similarly
complex issue).
We both know that if America watched repeated termination
of 23-week-old fetuses on television (or saw the procedure
truthfully documented in your paper), the sentiment of our
society would profoundly change. (The Alan Guttmacher Institute
estimated over 9,000 abortions after 21 weeks in 1987.)
Words fail to describe the barbarity of an unconditional
right to take the life of a human being as fully developed
as 23 weeks. You could never successfully defend it in the
public presence of the act itself.
You can do so only in the moral fog of phrases like: Abortion
must be left to the woman because it is "undeniably
sensitive". This is not compelling. There are many sensitive
situations where the state prescribes limits for how we express
our feelings where others are concerned. And there is another
concerned. If you are willing, you may meet this "other
person" face to face in dozens of hospitals around the
country.
Sincerely yours,
John Piper
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