In response to Dr. Young (Monitor, 1/7) he extols a mentor obstetrician who was a church-going Republican and performed abortions in Concord out of so-called compassion. Dr. Young fears we are headed back to the Dark Ages after the Dobbs decision and cites tired old cliches about back alley, coat hanger abortions before Roe. The deeper reality is that Roe and easy access abortion have done a number on our culture. Although he and others often cite the hard cases, the vast majority of abortions are performed because of convenience or pressure from an abusive boyfriend or unsupportive family. After the abortion a woman is often plagued with a lingering sense of guilt for what may have been.

After all, isn’t it by now clear with all the advances in ultrasound technology that the aborted fetus was not just a bunch of tissues but the life of a real human being snuffed out? If that fact is denied, then life does indeed go on but with a lessened sense of the value of life. Abortion then becomes just another form of birth control, and is too often resorted to when a new baby is not convenient, or the sex of the baby is not what the parents want, or the baby has Down syndrome, for example. And then the sexual union which ought to be the loving bond between husband and wife in the bringing forth of children becomes just another appetite, to be satisfied willy-nilly without regard to the consequences. Heaven help us!

William Judd

Concord