Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to Mr. Sanchez’s Nov. 3 column, which began as a criticism of those who carelessly use the term “offense” but ended as a diatribe against reproductive rights.

While I agree that people often claim offense as an excuse for refusing to enter into honest debate, I found Mr. Sanchez’s treatment of the abortion question to be drastically oversimplified.

The claim was that the real issue at the core of the abortion question is “whether the fetus is a person who deserves legal protection,” rather than “the government’s role” or “the right of women to control their bodies.”

I would suggest that it is impossible to consider any of these three issues without reference to the other two. How can one honestly consider whether or not a fetus deserves legal protection without considering the role of government in society or the extent to which a woman has reproductive rights?

Although I am in no way, as yet, willing to concede the point, let’s assume that a fetus is indeed a person. This does not settle the issue. Even if a fetus is a person, what duty does the woman owe the fetus? It is an inescapable fact that pregnant women put themselves at considerable health risk. Whose health takes precedence? The issue of whether banning abortion will eliminate abortions or simply increase so-called “clandestine” or “back-alley” abortions must also be confronted.

Consider the government’s role in society. Does the government have the right to force a woman to give birth? Does it have the right to decide what constitutes life? Also, how sacred is life in a society that exercises the death penalty? And remember, this is all assuming a fetus is indeed a person.

Abortion is such a difficult issue because it raises a spectrum of deeply philosophical questions of a breadth that is almost unrivaled in American politics. Artificially narrowing the issue makes it easy to have incomplete opinions and even easier to vilify anyone who disagrees with that opinion. Some of the greatest minds have labored over the abortion question for decades, and to claim that it is in any way simple is, at best, mistaken and, at worse, dishonest.

Alex LanglinaisPhilosophy junior