To the editor:

For those who choose to argue against a woman’s reproductive rights, I can say only this: Read more. The United States has long been comfortably enshrouded in its way of life, often forgetting that many of our “values” are a product of privilege. Because of this, this country has overlooked many opportunities to share our resources with those nations struggling to achieve stability and equity.

A prime example of this is President Bush’s global gag rule, reinstated in his first term, which blocks U.S. funds being given to international family-planning groups that offer abortion and abortion counseling. The implications of this? An uncontrolled population growth rate in the developing world, in which at least one-quarter of these births are unintentional, resulting in an ever-increasing number of malnourished children, many of whom never reach adulthood.

So when I read or hear the remarks of those opposing full reproductive rights in this country and elsewhere, I am disgusted. They characterize abortion as “violence against innocents.” What do you call the refusal of our plentiful resources to those starving children already born? If we cannot see past our own ideological differences in this country, what hope do these children, living and breathing far away, have for a future?

Before we launch these crusades for the unborn, why not give the already-born the consideration they deserve?

Marita Robinson,

Lawrence