Dear PV,

Thanks for your insightful article. I'm really trying to understand your point of view. I see things differently.

As I understand your article, a "pro-life" person who is against restricting smoking is, in your view, intellectually dishonest. This is because the "pro-life" person is thinking "if you don't like the smoke then take your body and go somewhere else!" while at the same time saying "don't have a abortion with your body." Thus creating what appears to be a contradiction. Do I understand your view correctly?

Obviously, this decision of whether to be around smoke would happen many times during every day as we go about our lives. If you'll allow me to illustrate another view, I would appreciate the honor. In order to be a reasonable parallel for comparison, we should use the run of the mill daily choices for abortion as a bench mark rather than the particular medical situations that you pointed out. (After all, we're not only looking at avoiding unfiltered cigarettes with extra nicotine.)

Now we've brought into the equation many very healthy fetus' with strong heartbeats. Unless this issue, the norm by a vast majority, is addressed, then picking apart the rare and unfortunate situations like you mentioned is unfair due to only considering the plight of one side of the equation but not the other. Is it intellectually honest to defend an elective final procedure for millions on the basis that a few may have tremendous trouble and pain? I recognize that there appear to be some tough calls here, but can it be right to have ended the chance to live a life so that someone else can be spared a heartbreak? As adults we could make the choice to give our life for another. But a child in the womb, despite the brain activity, cannot yet voluntarily make that decision. Intellectual honesty compells us to recognize that a heartbeat and brainwaves signify a bonafide person. We can see the images on ultrasound. We can see thumbsucking and pain. These are real people and we must not, in our zeal to protect someone from the smoke of unfiltered cigerattes with extra nicotine, cast someone out of society to the point that tomorrow they don't even get to decide if they'd like to try a smoke themselves.

I believe that abortion is wrong. All of us have done or allowed to happen things that were wrong and that we regret - even painfully. This is perhaps I think one of the greatest things about the Christian faith. I'm very thankful that I can take my pain and wrong doing to Christ and find forgiveness. I need it!

Again, I enjoyed your article. Obviously it inspired to examine my views on a level that I hadn't done before.

Take Care,

Mark Harrison

Bill Simon's Response: Thank you very much for writing, Mark. The point of the article was that if the fetus is in any "preventable" danger, then those of you who believe in inserting your thoughts into the equation of whether the woman or family should have the baby or not, should be looking to prevent ALL potential, and controllable, dangers to the unborn.

Your statement basically says "Well, the smoking hazard to the fetus is such a miniscule threat to the life of the fetus that first we have to take away the bigger threat to the fetus (i.e., legalized abortion) and then we'll see about taking care of the smaller threats. "

I don't see it as much of a case of "intellectual dishonesty" as much as it is "consistency of logic." For instance, I am pro-choice and I am in favor of the death penalty for capital crimes.

Until the fetus is born, it is not, in my view, equivalent to a live human being. A fetus hasn't yet lived, therefore, an abortion cannot take away a life. Granted, a fetus is a "potential life," but a potential life is not the same thing as a life, is it?

A human being who commits capital crimes deserves to be removed from the face of the earth. From this standpoint, there is no inconsistency of logic between my two positions.

I wonder how many people walking around today would not be here had single-child parents or mothers not aborted fetuses sometime in the last 30 years? Have you ever thought about that? A friend of mine is a single mother with one child (some SOB left her and her kid for another woman). She had an abortion early in life and had this child later. This child today wouldn't be here if she had had the first one.

The fact is, my mother had a miscarriage on her 2nd pregnancy. I am the last of three boys. Had that 2nd pregnancy not been a miscarriage, I might not be here typing this to you today. BUT, someone else would be on this earth because she planned on having 3 children.

So, the claim by the pro-life people that "30 million children less" walk the earth today because of abortion is patently false. The fact is that while those fetuses did get aborted, that doesn't necessarily mean they were not replaced with later pregnancies taken to full term when the mothers were financially and emotionally ready to provide for the child.

For all the hue and cry about "adoption" being a great option for mothers who do not, or cannot, take-on the task of raising a child, there are still 15,000 some-odd kids of varying ages in Georgia that are awaiting magical parents to show-up and adopt them. That silence I hear of the footsteps of pro-life/anti-abortion people in this country rushing to adopt all of these foster kids is quite deafening.

I know this viewpoint doesn't correspond to yours. I know you may consider me to be a "liberal Republican." The abortion issue has become more of a subject of emotion and faith rather than logic and knowledge. You believe what you believe based on your faith. I believe what I believe based on logic.

And, governments that are run on faith and emotion tend to go by the wayside pretty quickly. They're called "theocracies" and the inhabitants of such theocracies tend to not have the freedoms so prevalent in this country. Our representative democracy has survived this long specifically due to the fact that it is not a government run on the basis of faith, but on the rules of law.

- Bill Simon